My Mother, the Ambassador
by NotesfromaClassroom
Summary: Spock sets the record straight with a series of stories about his parents. A Spock/Uhura story featuring the adventures of Sarek and Amanda.
1. The Rules

**Chapter One: The Rules**

**Disclaimer: I make no money here; it's all for love. **

"Commander, a word?"

Cadet Uhura stands in the office doorway, her hands at her side, one foot ahead of the other, like someone facing a brisk headwind.

Which, Spock thinks, might be an apt metaphor. He tamps down his annoyance and blanks his expression.

"Office hours are over for the day," he says, turning slightly in his chair and looking back at his computer monitor on his desk. The cadet, however, either doesn't hear the note of dismissal in his voice or chooses to ignore it. _Chooses to ignore it, most likely_. In the six weeks that he's known her, he's seen this force of will from her in several in-class arguments.

Nothing unpleasant. Nothing even inappropriate. But unexpected.

Only the seniors in his advanced computer programming seminar speak as freely, ask as many questions—but with such deference and hesitation that he struggles not to become impatient with them.

The underclassmen in his lecture classes such as the xenolinguistics course the cadet is taking almost never raise a hand, rarely request clarification about anything, offer few answers unless called on directly. The dean had baffled him once by calling his attention to it, telling him to be more accessible. In response he had doubled his posted office hours.

"Not exactly what I had in mind," Dean Baker said, but then she never said what she _did_ have in mind. Spock chalked it up to some ineffable quality that human students looked for in their professors and found missing in him. He wasn't concerned.

"They are," Cadet Uhura says, "and yet you are still here. I won't take long."

A rustle of fabric, the minute squeak of the chair situated next to his desk as Cadet Uhura perches on its edge. Spock looks up, ready to make sure his dismissal is unmistakable this time.

To his surprise, the cadet is arched forward, her fingertips curved along the desktop, her ponytail spilling over one shoulder. He leans away.

"Really," she says, her face screwed into a frown, "I won't keep you. I just wanted to ask you to reconsider the late penalty."

Her comment is as disappointing as it is irritating—and when the cadet narrows her eyes, he knows he has let his emotions slip. He blinks and slows his breathing.

"As I explained in class today," he says with exaggerated care, "the syllabus is clear. All papers are due in my mail queue by 0100 on the scheduled day. Late work is not accepted."

Her eyes flash as he speaks. _She's angry?_ He's done nothing but remind her of the rules. He tells her so.

"Perhaps you are unaware," she says, her tone matching his, "that the little tremor in the Bay Area last night knocked the Academy generator offline. My dorm didn't have power until right before class this morning."

"I did know," he says. Cadet Uhura sits upright so quickly that Spock surmises his answer has caught her off guard. Indeed, her next words confirm it.

"You knew the network was down? That it was impossible to send the papers to you at 0100?"

"The syllabus does not say that papers must be sent _at_ 0100. As long as the papers were in the queue _by _0100, they met the deadline."

"But the network was down before that!"

"So you said."

"It wasn't possible to send papers while the network was down! Through no fault of their own, students were prevented from meeting the deadline. Your penalty isn't fair!"

"It was possible to send papers before the network went down. Those students who did so met the deadline."

"Are you being deliberately dense?"

Her question is so provocative, so borderline disrespectful, that he blinks. Twice.

"Cadet," he says at last, "I fail to see how this concerns you at all. Your own paper was one of the first ones turned in. As I recall, you sent it 26 hours, 15 minutes, 33 seconds before it was due."

With a visible and audible _whump_, Cadet Uhura sits back in the chair.

When she speaks, her voice is oddly small, constrained, wary.

"How do you know that?"

"You dispute it?"

"No, no," she says, tripping uncharacteristically over her words. "I…no, I know I turned it in early. I didn't think…."

She lowers her eyes as her words grow fainter, drifting off into air.

With a start, Spock realizes that he is staring at her. Usually she is at a distance, one of 53 students sitting in angled chairs in the small amphitheater in the language building, almost indistinguishable from any other red-uniformed cadet.

This close, he can see her features so clearly that he has trouble looking away.

The way one tendril of hair has slipped loose from her hair band, falling forward over her ear. The late morning light from the window casting an interesting shadow along the line of her jaw.

"That doesn't change anything," she says, darting a glance at his face, her voice still strangely confined, like someone speaking from a great distance. "It isn't fair to all the students who _tried _to mail their papers on time. It's the principle of the thing."

With a fluid motion, he reaches forward and toggles off the computer monitor. He feels her watching him, knows somehow that she will recognize that he is giving her his full attention out of his respect for her intellect.

"Cadet," he says, not unkindly, "your concern for your fellow classmates is commendable. But the rule is the rule."

Her intake of breath, her quick brush of her hand to her face signal some resolve that escapes him. Surely he's been as clear as he can be.

"Sir," she says, placing her hands flat on the desk. His eyes flick down and away. "You made the rule and you can change it. It has no authority except your own. You are being unnecessarily legalistic when you imply the rule can't be changed _because _it is a rule. In fact, that isn't even logical."

He looks up then, undecided about whether to let the unnamed emotion roiling in his side bloom into real anger at her insult.

"I meant no offense," she says, a hint of a smile at the corner of her lips.

"None taken," he says by force of habit, but to his amazement, he realizes it is true.

A revelation then: whatever he is feeling, it isn't anger.

"After all," she says, and he recognizes that he is staring again, measuring his understanding of her words against the expression flickering across her features, "I'm not asking you to change the rule, just to acknowledge an unusual circumstance. To show mercy when you could mete out justice, so to speak."

She laughs lightly then, and Spock says, "Though none of your classmates have asked for any."

"Because they're—"

The rest of her sentence wavers unspoken between them. He hears her take a breath.

"I mean," she stumbles, "it's just that some people find it hard to—"

Again she lets her words grind to a halt.

_Be more accessible_, Dean Baker had said.

How hard it is—breaching this space between himself and others.

For a long time he had thought this particular loneliness was unique to him, had privately nursed his resentments toward the Vulcan school children who singled him out for ridicule, had placed his confusion and sadness at the feet of his mother and father, never with direct accusations, but quietly, making them aware of the slights he suffered at school, thinking they weren't aware.

But of course they had known. Had argued with each other over how to respond. Had let his difficulties color their feelings for each other.

He wishes now that he had been more careful.

"I agree," he says, "that the loss of power made meeting the deadline more challenging."

"Made it impossible," she quips, and he replies, "Not for you, remember?"

"My memory isn't as good as yours," she says, lifting her eyes to his.

To his surprise she flushes—tiny beads of perspiration appearing across her cheeks, dampening the errant curls of hair along her neck.

For a moment the air in the small office is heavy, hot, still.

"My mother makes the same complaint."

Now it is his turn to flush. He's frankly astonished at himself, at blurting out something so personal, so unwarranted. Placing his hands on the arms of his chair, he prepares to stand, to make some excuse about needing to leave immediately.

But before he can, Cadet Uhura says, "You must have reminded her of things she wanted to forget."

The honesty of her comment gives him pause.

"I'll bet you have some interesting stories about your mother," she adds, and he says, quietly, "Indeed."

"Commander," Cadet Uhura says into the sudden silence, "I'm heading to the cafeteria for something to drink. You wouldn't care to join me, would you?"

Actually, he wouldn't. The cafeteria is noisy, crowded, not a place he frequents by choice. He waits a moment too long to answer and the cadet gives a brisk, artificial smile and says, "I'm sorry! I know you are busy."

And just like that, Spock has what he's scoffed at more than once—something so close to an out-of-body experience or a schizophrenic episode that later that night he dwells on it for an hour sitting cross-legged before his _asenoi_.

"If you like," he hears himself utter, like watching himself in a dream, "I can make tea for both of us in the break room. There is one story about my mother that you might find relevant."

X X X X X X X

Before she noticed the saffron-colored sky or the mint-green sand beneath her feet, Amanda was aware of the smells. Musky, herbal, spicy—drafts of different aromas as she picked her way across the path from the space tarmac to the low-ceiling building where the aOpli officials waited.

She walked, as was expected, several yards behind Sarek—a Vulcan tradition she had accepted reluctantly, and only because she knew that it didn't reflect some latent sexism but evolved from ancient times when couples traveled this way for safety across the desert—the larger males out front to scout for wild _sehlats_ or _lematyas._

It had its advantage even now. Watching Sarek from behind was still a pleasure, even after five years of marriage. For such a broad-shouldered man, he was surprisingly graceful—stepping boldly across this new world. Through their bond she felt his quiet confidence and she smiled for both of them.

As the junior ambassador attached to Somak, the ambassador to the Alpha quadrant, Sarek spent more than half his time traveling—sometimes alone but more often on mission junkets serving as Somak's secretary. While the time apart could be a challenge, Amanda also found it necessary. Indeed, her life on Vulcan was so full with her work—teaching languages in the local school, tutoring adults who wanted to improve their Standard, volunteering in the community civic organizations—not to mention her friendships with two of her neighbors and the occasional babysitting she did for their children—that she sometimes joked that she wouldn't know what to do if she had a husband underfoot all the time.

Or at least, that's how she had felt before she lost two babies.

Miscarriages, midway through her pregnancies, a girl and a boy, both perfectly formed, both conceived naturally.

For months she had grieved, unwilling to believe the healers who said medical intervention would be necessary to create a viable fetus and carry it to term. The idea that she and Sarek could be so deeply connected, so viscerally a part of each other, and not be able to have children was hard to accept.

Her sister, Cecilia, was a pediatrician and had suggested adoption, but Amanda resisted that idea, too.

When Sarek assured her that he was willing to do whatever was necessary, either on Vulcan or Earth, Amanda was aware that her reaction was irrational—her initial anger misplaced, her sense of betrayal completely at odds with the very real loss she knew he felt. Of course he wasn't suggesting that the children she lost could be replaced. Still, one night she lashed out at him at supper when he had casually suggested they consult a new geneticist. After that, he had stopped asking.

And then a few weeks ago she recognized that she had turned some sort of emotional corner when she held her neighbor's new baby and felt none of the old jealousy or sorrow. She told Sarek that night that she was ready to try again.

For months he had been inundated with late hours and extra work doing the pre-negotiations for a new trade deal with the aOpli. The trade items were of less value than the strategic position of the planet, halfway between Vulcan and the Romulan Neutral Zone. An outpost—or at the very least, a trigger buoy—could be established to keep better tabs on Romulan movement. When he came home to Amanda's announcement, he made what for him sounded like an impulsive decision.

"Come with me," he told her as they ate their evening meal.

"On the trade mission?" Amanda asked, choking on a spoon of thick _shur_. "What about my job? My students?"

"Take a leave of absence," Sarek said, the light in his eyes betraying his enthusiasm. Instead of dismissing his suggestion out of hand, Amanda said she would consider it, but before she went to bed, she had already made up her mind. A trip off planet! The excitement of seeing someplace new, someplace not associated with sadness, appealed to her as much as the chance to be with Sarek—even though he would be busy for much of the time in meetings. If nothing else, the journey to aOpli and back would give them an opportunity to talk, to be able to look up and see each other sitting close enough to reach out and touch.

The next day she told the director of the school that she needed time off—and the director had nodded and signed the release without a word.

Whatever she had imagined the aOpli people would be like, they exceeded her expectations. Tall and willowy, from a distance they reminded her of walking trees, their arms no bigger around than the thickest part of her thumb. Instead of fingers they had gauzy, frilly tendrils that were in constant motion, like sea grass undulating in an invisible ocean current.

Their heads and faces were more typically humanoid, with large, deepset eyes and an expressive mouth. Sarek had shown her pictures of the aOpli official he had communicated with most, and as she picked her way across the sand, Amanda thought she recognized him—or her. No one was quite sure what, if any, gender the aOpli had.

"Sarek, we meet _as planned_," Amanda heard the aOpli say, the universal translator changing a series of clicks and whistles into oddly-accented Vulcan. Sarek inclined his head and raised his hand in the Vulcan salute.

"We come to serve."

"And Ambassador Somak?"

"He was delayed by personal illness. The healers expect a quick recovery, but as you and I have some preliminary work to do before our supervisors sign the trade agreement, I came _as planned_."

The repetition of the phrase "_as planned_" by both Sarek and the aOpli caught Amanda's attention. Although little was known of this species, their insistence on detailed planning, their reluctance to stray from accepted protocol, was noteworthy.

"A good thing the Federation asked the Vulcans to do the trade negotiations," Amanda had said months ago when Sarek was assigned to the mission. "You two have lots in common."

"Unfortunate," the aOpli said, its tendrils waving in what Amanda assumed was a gesture of sympathy or distress. With a sudden motion, the tall creature turned and ducked into the nearest opening of the building, the Vulcans following suit.

Once inside, the trade delegation was shepherded into a large reception room and Amanda was escorted to her quarters by an aOpli much shorter than the one who had spoken.

"Thank you," Amanda said as the aOpli circled the small room, moving its arms from one object to another before moving back to the door. Like a bellboy explaining the functions of the room, Amanda realized with a start.

"Thank you so much," she said again, but the aOpli either didn't understand her or chose not to respond. In another moment Amanda was alone.

She barely had time to unpack her travel bag when Sarek was at the door, his face flushed, his breathing forced in the way that indicated he was angry.

"What happened?" she said, dropping her bag to the sleeping platform.

"They will not speak with me," Sarek said, his eyes flashing. "Their rules do not allow them to converse with non-sentient creatures."

"Non-sentient creatures? What are you talking about?"

But instead of speaking further, through their bond Sarek showed her the aOpli diplomat, let her hear the strange hiss and snap and the translated words—_it is against our rules to communicate directly with non-sentients. You have misled us_.

_I don't understand,_ Amanda said wordlessly, and she winced as Sarek's fury rolled over her like a wave.

"Apparently," he said, catching his breath and sitting heavily on the sleeping platform, "we have failed some litmus test for sentience."

"But you've been in communication for months! Why let you come all this way if they weren't going to negotiate? Oh, this is ridiculous! They know you are sentient."

Squinting into the middle distance, Sarek said, "Something has convinced them otherwise."

For a wild moment Amanda worried that her presence might have confused the aOpli. After all, the rest of the delegation were Vulcans, all of them part of the official embassy. She was the odd one out on both counts.

Sensing her unease, Sarek turned his gaze to her.

"This has nothing to do with you. Something in our appearance seemed to offend them."

"Maybe the translator was faulty," Amanda said, settling herself on the platform beside Sarek. "Or maybe the aOpli are sensitive to telepathy. I remember your telling me about the Znang people—how the telepathic thoughts of others caused them physical pain."

Sarek leaned forward and rested his bent elbows on his knees, steepling his hands under his chin.

"Perhaps," he said skeptically, "though we are using the same translation program that we used in our earlier communications with them, so it seems unlikely that it is at fault. Something that was not evident in our subspace transmissions is triggering their reaction now."

"Then it could be the telepathy," Amanda said. Sarek shook his head slowly.

"I've felt no one trying to access my thoughts," he said. "If the aOpli are sensitive, they themselves are psi null, and that would be unprecedented."

"Your clothes. They might be considered scandalously flimsy," Amanda suggested, a hint of teasing in her voice. More than once she had complained about the weight and heft of traditional Vulcan robes.

Sarek's mood lightened momentarily and he cut his eyes at her to let her know he was being chaffed.

"Whatever it is, if I cannot ascertain it and correct it, this will be a very short visit."

At the time Amanda had been certain that a solution was close at hand, but the next few days were a fruitless series of trials and errors. Sarek approached one official and then another, altering his apparel, his body language, his words of greeting. Each time he was met with either silence or a comment about not being permitted to talk to non-sentient beings.

"It is our law," an especially tall official told him late in the afternoon of the third day. "When you become sentient, return and we can continue."

"Then you do not oppose the trade agreement," Sarek said, and the aOpli waved its arms and shuffled away.

That night the Vulcans met in Sarek's room and discussed whether to continue their efforts.

"Somak is scheduled to arrive in seventeen hours," one of the younger Vulcans said. "Coming here would be an inefficient use of his time."

"That is uncertain," the engineer, T'Lana, said. "Somak may be successful where Sarek has failed."

From her seat in the corner, Amanda let loose a ripple of indignation and saw Sarek recoil slightly. Abashed that she had distracted him, she tamped down her annoyance.

"I will leave that determination to Somak," Sarek said. "He has been apprised of the situation here. If we cannot get the aOpli to move forward with negotiations by midday tomorrow, we are recalled."

His words were an adjournment. In a few minutes, he and Amanda were the only ones left in the room.

"It's probably a simple misunderstanding," Amanda said, "and we'll all laugh about it when we get back home. That is, _I'll_ laugh."

This time her attempt at lightening Sarek's mood did nothing but highlight how quietly distraught he was. He begged off accompanying her to the food preparation room the aOpli had set up for them at the end of the hall, and with one rueful look back, Amanda set off to make herself something to eat before she got too tired.

And she _was _tired. While Sarek and the Vulcans had been tying themselves into knots trying to discover the source of the miscommunication, she had spent three days wandering through what she assumed was the capital city. Most of the buildings were low and nondescript like the one where the delegation was being housed, though she had seen a cluster of larger buildings in the city center.

If there was a pattern or grid that determined where buildings and waterways were placed, Amanda couldn't discern it. Instead, the city felt jumbled, hodge-podge, like a random assortment of oddly-shaped boxes. Several times she was lost and tried to get directions from a passerby, but though she garnered what she assumed were quizzical looks from the people she stopped, no one spoke to her or did more than make vague gestures with their long, fronded appendages.

Although Sarek had reassured her that the atmospheric pressure and gravity on the aOpli homeworld were close to Vulcan's, she was particularly tired when she finally found her way back that afternoon. The heat, too, had started to bother her, a surprise after years of living in a desert climate.

Something cool to drink, then, and some of the native fruit she had tried earlier.

As she headed down the hall she passed a short aOpli going in the other direction. The same one who had shown her to her room when they first arrived? She couldn't tell. Sarek had told her that if the aOpli had names or other personal designations, none had ever felt the need to share them with him. Perhaps they had some other way of recognizing and addressing each other.

"Good evening," she said automatically, not expecting an answer, passing on down the hall.

Behind her she heard the aOpli stop. A quick shuffle, a tap on her shoulder—and to her astonishment, when she turned around, the aOpli said, "Do you require anything?"

She stuttered that she was going to get something to drink and eat and the aOpli's large eyes widened, its arms tracing a circle in the air.

"May I join you?"

Completely flustered, Amanda nodded, and then to make sure she was understood, she added, "Yes, of course!"

Walking beside the aOpli, Amanda cautioned a glance and was rewarded with an unmistakable grin.

_What was going on?_

Did the aOpli harbor some racism for Vulcans but exempted her from their refusal to communicate? That seemed unlikely. She remembered her first night there—the silence as the aOpli had shown her to her room.

She wracked her brain for what could have changed in so short a time. During her exploration of the city she had come across a small open-air market and had sampled some fragrant skin salves on display. Was it possible that she had accidentally discovered the source of the aOpli's objection—some off-worlder odor that needed to be masked? Certainly the planet was rich in natural smells. Amanda recalled her own strong reaction to them when she first arrived.

If she could find out—maybe by questioning this friendly aOpli? She pictured T'Lana's face, heard again her pointed comment—_Somak may be successful where Sarek has failed_. If she could put a dent in that smug Vulcan hubris...

After picking through the assortment of fruit in the containment bin, she sat in one of the low-slung chairs in the food preparation room. The aOpli picked up a different fruit and sat in the chair nearest Amanda.

For a few moments they both busied themselves with peeling back the tough outer shell to the pulp inside, the aOpli using its feathery fronds like fingers. Taking a tiny nip of the fruit, Amanda said, "This is delicious. What's it called?"

The aOpli paused.

"I do not understand your query."

"The name," Amanda said. "What is the name of this fruit?"

"It is one of the things that we eat."

"Yes, I know that," Amanda said, trying not to sound impatient. "I wanted to know what you call it."

"We do not call it. We eat it."

Suppressing a little sigh, Amanda tried again.

"How do you distinguish between _this_," she said, lifting the fruit up, "and _that_," she said, pointing to the fruit the aOpli was holding.

Again the aOpli paused.

"We have no need to distinguish between them. We eat them both."

_Now whose hubris was showing? _This time she did sigh.

"I'm Amanda," she said. "What's your name?"

Instead of answering, the aOpli set the fruit down on the table and slowly raised its arms, the fronds spread wide as if to sift the air. As the aOpli moved, Amanda smelled something like nutmeg or cinnamon.

In a few moments the aOpli lowered its arms and said, "You use words I do not understand, and yet you are sentient. Is it the nature of your species to assign words this way?"

"You mean give names to things? Yes, it is our nature. I take it is not yours."

"It may be," the aOpli said. "I am newly sentient and have not learned all that I will know."

"What do you mean, that you are newly sentient?"

The smell of nutmeg and cinnamon drifted to Amanda's nose as the aOpli leaned forward.

"My lifeforce has begun," the aOpli said. "As has yours."

"And this lifeforce is what makes you sentient?"

"It is."

"I'm confused," Amanda said, finishing the last nibble of her fruit. "Perhaps we are defining sentience differently. To my people, sentience is the ability to think, to know oneself, to reflect on the world."

"To us also," the aOpli said. Amanda sat back, nonplussed.

"But some of your people have refused to speak to us because they say we are not sentient."

"The others who are with you are not sentient."

"But you said," Amanda said, biting back her frustration, "that the aOpli believe that living creatures are sentient. Surely you can see that the others are alive."

"They do not carry a lifeforce as you do."

"You mean, they are Vulcans."

"No," the aOpli said, the universal translator rendering its words slightly louder, slightly harder. "They have no lifeforce. They are empty."

"I don't understand—"

Waving its arms, the aOpli said, "The problem is that I am newly sentient. Someone whose lifeforce is closer to completion may understand your questions better. If you require it, I can find someone else."

"You mean find someone older? Because you are a...young person?"

"Many younger than I am have carried a lifeforce to completion. But if you prefer, I can seek someone older than I am. Some of the very oldest have carried a lifeforce more than once. They may have the answers you want."

But all at once there it was, the key. Amanda's sudden intake of breath startled the aOpli, who sat up straight and held its arms by its side.

Cautiously, Amanda said, "This lifeforce? You said you carry it to completion. What happens after that?"

"We liberate it. It has its own life then, one apart from us."

"Ah," Amanda said, "so that's where little aOpli come from! You're saying you're pregnant. That you carry a new life inside you! That's the same for us!"

"Yes, I know," the aOpli said. "Your scent has changed. Your lifeforce is awake. Now that you are sentient, you surely are aware."

X X X X X X X

"And that's how your mother found out she was expecting you!" Nyota says, fidgeting with the handle of her empty tea cup.

"Her pregnancy wasn't confirmed until much later, once she and my father returned to Vulcan. The aOpli may have been mistaken."

"Or maybe not," Nyota says, her voice almost playful. Without asking, Spock refills her cup and then refreshes his own.

"Of course," he says, "they did not return home right away. She first had to negotiate the trade agreement."

"Did you say _she_?"

He looks over at the cadet and sips his tea, an unaccustomed contentment making him linger over the telling of the story.

"The aOpli refused to talk to anyone else in the delegation. By their legal definition, my mother was the only sentient being among them."

When she laughs, Cadet Uhura throws her head back and flashes her teeth, her ponytail swinging from side-to-side, her eyes shuttered for a moment. Spock uses that moment of her unguarded attention to examine the sweep of her neck, a tiny mole gracing the corner of her jaw.

"But you haven't told me everything," she says, and for a fleeting moment he feels exposed. "Were all of the aOpli females? Has anyone ever catalogued their language? I'd love to see what the linguists have found out."

Tilting his head, Spock says, "Their language has not been extensively researched. As far as anyone can tell, the aOpli have no gender but reproduce through a spontaneous cloning process. Only pregnant aOpli seem to have the cognitive ability to communicate in any complex way, and their cultural taboos keep them from communicating with non-pregnant beings. That lessens the odds considerably for meaningful interaction."

"Oh, I don't know," the cadet says, grinning, "your mother managed to get around those rules."

Sipping the last of her tea, she sets the cup down on the table with a noticeable _clink_, the noise both surprising and embarrassing her. She flushes and looks up.

"I didn't mean to take up so much of your time," she says, scooting back her chair and getting to her feet. "Thank you for the tea and the story."

As she makes her way to the door of the break room, Spock stands and says, "I will send out a notice extending the deadline. This time, at least, we can bend the rules."

Pausing at the door, she turns and smiles.

"Thank you, sir."

_Sir._

The word echoes in the room after she is gone. He adds the pain he feels on hearing it to the list of things he has to meditate on tonight.

Or perhaps he should call his mother instead. She'll be suspicious at first if he does, their scheduled subspace calls on the weekends arranged well in advance.

But she'll be happy, too, something he doesn't often allow himself to acknowledge.

Her extensive experience as a teacher—surely she will have advice for how to _be more accessible_ to his students without drifting into something too familiar, something skating on the edge of impropriety, something more than what the dean had in mind.

Not that he'll ask her directly, nor tell her details that even now he doesn't articulate to himself.

Like how he found himself sharing such a personal story with a cadet—something that he won't let happen again.

**A/N: Here we go! Does this work—telling Amanda's story through Spock's recollections? My plan is to have him tell a series of stories about his mother and father, moving forward through the little timeline of the **_**Star Trek**_** universe I play in. Let me know what you think. It's scary to try something different; it could be a disaster!  
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**Thanks to everyone who gives me feedback. It helps so much!**


	2. Staking Claims

**Chapter Two: Staking Claims**

**Disclaimer: I make no money playing here.**

When the bell chimes to end class, no one gets up to leave. Only once has a cadet ever made the mistake of thinking the bell was a dismissal, gathering his PADD and satchel and standing up hurriedly, looking around in confusion at his seated classmates. Spock said nothing—merely raised an eyebrow—and the cadet sat down with a thump, waiting, like everyone else, for Spock to dismiss them.

That had been back in early September, and now, the last day of the semester before winter break, the cadets sit almost motionless when the bell chimes.

Except, of course, Cadet Uhura, whose hand is in the air.

Twice during the lecture today she had stopped him, first to ask for the source of one of the research papers he referenced, and then to question a graph listed in the pre-reading. Both times he had silently applauded her initiative and precision, though he suspected her classmates did not. The eye rolls from more than one cadet the second time she spoke suggested they were annoyed.

Why they would be is a mystery to Spock. Surely the other cadets appreciate how Cadet Uhura's participation raises the level of instruction and achievement for everyone in the class.

On the other hand, answering her question now may take some time. If he keeps the students too long, he could make some of them late for their next class.

"Cadet Uhura," he says, but before she can speak, he hurries on, "you may remain to ask your question if you wish. Everyone else is dismissed."

As the students stand and file out the aisle to the back of the room, Spock realizes—belatedly—that he should have said something to acknowledge that this is the last time he will see most of them. Few students, particularly in the language department, take him for more than one course. In fact, today is his last day doing double duty for both the language and the computer departments, a task he adopted reluctantly last year, and only when a language professor left unexpectedly for health reasons.

Instead of following her classmates out the lecture hall, Cadet Uhura makes her way to the podium where Spock is busy turning off the projector and packing up his notes. From the corner of his eye he sees her standing to the side, her arms hugging her backpack to her chest.

Sliding his PADD into his briefcase, he turns at last to nod to her.

"Your question?"

Ever since that day two months ago when he had slipped up and offered her a cup of tea in the office break room, Spock has corralled his attention, has kept all of his interactions with her formal, public, impersonal.

Even now he feels squeamish when he thinks about how much he revealed about himself in the story about his mother—though he told the story with much less detail than he could have, the way he tells it to himself in his imagination, from his mother's point of view.

Still, he has to be more careful.

Particularly with a student this bright, this engaging—

_He's doing it again, letting himself feel drawn to her. _

A flash of self-loathing at his loss of control. He struggles to keep his expression neutral.

"Actually," she says, "I have a comment _and_ a question."

For a wild moment he is afraid that she is going to ask him to join her again for a cup of tea. She's done so before. One day shortly after their tea in the break room, she lingered after the dismissal bell and invited him to join her at a local tea shop, but he turned her down so quickly, so forcefully, that he was certain he offended her.

She invited him once more after that, and when he refused a second time, she stopped asking.

_A relief, and a disappointment._

He picks up his briefcase and walks up the aisle. Without glancing in her direction, he hears her following.

Not until they exit the building and stand at the top of the wide stairs in full view of the commons does he feel safe enough to turn and look at her.

Her expression causes him instant pain. Clearly she's distressed about something, her eyes narrowed, her brow furrowed. When she tilts her head he sees her earring swing away from her cheek, like a pendulum.

"Commander," she says, her eyes searching his, "I apologize for taking up so much of your time. But I need to talk to you about something."

A sudden tightness in his chest shortens his breathing and he looks over her shoulder to the students walking past on the sidewalk. In the middle of the commons a group of cadets are throwing an aerodynamic disc to each other, a recent pastime that seems to consume an inordinate amount of their energy.

"Sir," she says, and he hazards a glance back at her face. "I noticed in the course descriptions for next semester that there are no second level xenolinguistics classes. Do you think the dean would add one if enough students petitioned for it?"

_That's what she wanted to ask? _

A relief, and a disappointment.

"As far as I know," he says slowly, "no one ever has. At this late date, however, it seems unlikely. The faculty have already been given their assignments for next semester."

"Oh!" she says, clearly disappointed. "I hadn't thought about that."

She looks so abashed, so cast down, that he feels words rushing to his lips before he can stop them. After all, today is, in all probability, the last time he will see her—

"If that offer of tea still stands?"

She blinks then, obviously casting about in her memory. Spock berates himself for expecting her to remember something offered so casually weeks ago. What foolishness.

But her expression brightens into a smile and she says, "Oh, I wish I could! Maybe another time!"

To his astonishment she throws her hand up and he realizes that she is waving to someone on the commons. Turning to follow her gaze, he sees one of his more promising students, a junior, J. C. Ellison, making his way toward the bottom of the steps, his tall, lanky frame striding purposefully. Last week J. C. had asked Spock about working as his assistant next year—something Spock has agreed to consider if his current T. A. doesn't prove more satisfactory soon.

As he makes his way down the steps, Spock watches Cadet Uhura traipsing ahead of him, her motions as balanced as a dancer—the sway of her hips, the bend of her knee.

There it is again, that unwanted pull, something too close to the beginning of arousal. He feels his face flush.

Where the steps end and the sidewalk begins, she lifts her hand once more in greeting. From his position halfway down the wide steps, Spock watches as J. C. looks up briefly and nods at him.

And then, instead of heading toward him to ask about the assistantship as Spock expects, J. C. walks up to Cadet Uhura, and circling her waist with his hands, leans into her for a kiss.

Spock is so startled that he blinks.

It speaks more of friendship than passion. It lasts only seconds.

But on the shuttle ride from San Francisco to Seattle that evening, Spock thinks of little else.

He finds himself seated next to a chatty seatmate, his PADD in his lap to ward off an unwanted conversation, but he barely pretends to read it. Instead he revisits the scene on the commons that afternoon.

The way she dipped forward, her eyes shutting as she leaned up into the kiss.

Her lips parted slightly, her hand reaching up to stroke J. C.'s cheek. The way they turned in unison, arms linked, and walked away from him without a backward glance.

Nothing extraordinary for two young humans, two cadets thrown into a challenging environment. Nothing, indeed, that he himself hadn't done when he was a cadet, exploring human sexuality—

He stops that train of thought but in a few moments his mind circles back around to the kiss, like an afterimage…

The trip to Seattle is Spock's reluctant concession to his family. Most of the Thomassons will be in town at some point during the holidays, and though he has a great deal of preparation to do for his upcoming advanced computer seminar, Spock knows the time with his family will be pleasant.

And necessary. As his mother often reminds him, relationships take time. His parents may be there, too, visiting Amanda's sister Cecilia, his cousin Chris' mother.

Chris in particular has been anxious for his company. The last time they spoke, Chris confided that he was in a new relationship that was intense, serious, so much so that he was considering marriage.

"I want you to meet her," Chris said, and Spock had refrained from sighing into his comm.

"You hardly need my approval," he said. "And as I recall, the last time I met someone you felt a commitment to—"

He let his words trail off. Although from time to time they allude to her, neither Spock nor Chris has spoken at length about Chris' college girlfriend, C'rina. Of Orion and Romulan ancestry, she had flirted with Spock when he visited his cousin on the Mars colony campus, even going so far as to try to seduce him.

And would have been successful, if Chris had not discovered them. The cousins had not spoken to each other for months afterwards.

On the other end of the comm line, Chris laughed.

"That was then," he said. "This is now. Besides, we haven't seen you in months. You're overdue for a visit."

As he lets his gaze drift from his PADD to the rapidly approaching Seattle transport station visible out the window, Spock thinks that Chris is right, that he hasn't taken the time for family lately. Perhaps that's one reason his focus has started to drift—he's let his work consume too much of his energy. Closing his eyes, he reaches out and allows himself to sense the bond with his parents, like an undercurrent of care, his mother's bright presence as warm as a lantern, his father's consciousness softer, more reserved.

Stretching out further, Spock searches for an awareness of T'Pring. She's there, but so faint that he has trouble defining her borders, like trying to grasp a wisp of fog. He feels an upwelling of disappointment and then anger. They had parted badly when he left Vulcan, T'Pring not bothering to hide her disapproval of his turning down the VSA in favor of Starfleet.

He's seen her only rarely since then. If she were more supportive, or at least more available, he's certain he would not be buffeted now by unwanted thoughts about Cadet Uhura—

He stops that train of thought, too. It's unjust to blame T'Pring for his own lack of control.

The shuttle pilot announces the landing and the passengers around him begin collecting their luggage. Beside him, the middle-aged woman who tried unsuccessfully to engage him in conversation unlatches her seat restraint and darts him a decidedly unfriendly glare.

As soon as he exits the passenger area in the terminal, Spock spots Chris standing on the other side of the room, his rumpled shirt and tousled blonde hair a study in contrast to Spock's neat gray uniform and trimmed bangs. Even from this distance—and even as distracted as he has been since leaving San Francisco—Spock can tell that Chris is unhappy.

_Irritated that he has been asked to interrupt his schedule to pick Spock up at the transport station?_ Unlikely. Of all the humans Spock knows, Chris is the most accommodating, unusually easy-going, adaptable. More than once Spock has wished he had Chris' same equanimity.

Nor is it likely that Chris is distressed by something professional. Whenever he mentions his private practice as a therapist, Chris seems fulfilled, content.

_The relationship, then. _

"Cassandra?" Spock asks when he's within earshot, and Chris gives a half-hearted smile and says, "No use trying to hide anything from you."

It's an observation Spock rarely hears about himself. Indeed, more common are pointed complaints from colleagues and acquaintances that he misses their cues, misreads their facial expressions, ignores the toll their emotions have on their posture, their choice of words. Idly he rubs the scar on his thumb that he's had since childhood, identical to the one on Chris' right hand, an artifact of a ritual involving a rusty razor that Chris had called "becoming blood brothers." At the time Spock dismissed it as fanciful, though the reality is that he's always been able to _read_ Chris better than he can most people.

"Your relationship has ended?"

At that Chris laughs mirthlessly.

"That's one way to put it. _She dumped me_ is another way_. _You know—_broke my heart_?"

"Meaning you did not initiate the ending."

"Right," Chris says, leading the way through the milling crowd to the front door. Spock follows in his wake, careful to tuck his arms to his side.

"I knew it," Chris says as they approach his flitter outside. Attached to the windscreen is a small flashing flimplast, a notice that Chris' parking in a restricted zone has been tagged and fined.

"I should have taken public transport," Spock says. "I have inconvenienced you."

"This isn't your fault," Chris says, peeling the ticket from the windscreen and slipping it into his pocket. "I made the decision to park here."

For a moment he sounds like himself—affable, unconcerned—but with a sudden motion, he kicks the side of the flitter so hard that it rings with a dull thud.

They ride to Chris' apartment in silence.

"If you prefer," Spock says as Chris sets the flitter down and unsnaps the door locks, "I can stay elsewhere this week."

At that something seems to shift in Chris' posture.

"Don't be crazy," he says. "I've been looking forward to this. You'll cheer me up."

That, too, is an observation Spock rarely hears about himself.

When Spock drops his duffel in the spare bedroom, Chris' distraction is apparent. The room is clean but bare, with none of the extra blankets he usually piles on the bed for Spock's comfort. Perhaps he should insist that Chris let him stay in a local hotel instead.

But when he comes out of the room, Chris hands him a mug of hot tea and motions for him to sit on the sofa.

For the next hour Spock listens as Chris tells the story of Cassandra—the familiar human arc of attraction and desire, compromise and regret, the inexorable conclusion. When he finishes, the silence seems to call for some response, though Spock is at a loss for what to say.

"She may change her mind," he offers at last. Immediately he realizes that his words are inadequate. A shadow flits across Chris' face and he shakes his head.

"I think it's too late for that," he says.

"There are always possibilities."

"That's what your father said," Chris says, glancing up.

Chris has spoken to Sarek about _a broken heart_? The incongruity makes Spock blink.

On the other hand, Sarek has always shown an interest in Chris, his only nephew, keeping up with his school progress and supporting his decision to specialize in counseling instead of surgery as his father, David, had hoped. The irony is not lost on Spock.

Still, that his father and his cousin have a relationship apart from him is something he rarely considers in any conscious way.

"He reminded me," Chris adds, "that Aunt Amanda turned him down at first, too. That he had to work hard to convince her to give him a chance."

Leaning forward and setting his empty tea cup on the coffee table, Spock says, "My mother's account of that story differs somewhat. Would you care to hear it?"

X X X X X X X

"It's only one night a week and an occasional weekend."

Mr. Johnson blinked behind thick, old-fashioned glasses, an affectation that Amanda found amusing, just like his silk ties and fossil-fuel ground car. Despite his personal quirks, however, Mr. Johnson was a capable principal of the elementary school where Amanda led an after-school tutorial for the children of Federation representatives.

"But I've never taught adults," she protested when he asked her to tutor some of the workers at the Vulcan embassy.

"I'm sure you'll adjust," Mr. Johnson said, waving his hand dismissively. "And quite frankly, I don't think the job will last that long. The Vulcans are notoriously difficult to work with. You aren't the first teacher they've hired."

"And it sounds like I won't be the last."

"Just so," Mr. Johnson said, handing her a slip of paper with an address and a comm number.

For two days she debated whether or not to go to the trouble to apply. An overdue notice about her rent settled the issue.

The woman on the other end of the comm sounded pleasant enough. _Perhaps the Vulcan reputation for being difficult was unjustified? _Amanda had never met a Vulcan personally. If they brought any of their children with them while they were posted on Earth, they didn't enroll them in the local schools.

The embassy was housed in a nondescript building near Federation Headquarters, the next bus stop past Starfleet Academy. On her ride to the interview Amanda watched uniformed students—cadets, she corrected herself—making their way through one of the large gates onto the campus.

The woman who greeted her in the reception area was tall and thin, her heavy robe dusting the floor. When Amanda told her why she was there, the woman made no sign but turned and headed down the corridor. For a moment Amanda stood motionless, and then realizing she was expected to follow, hurried after her.

Entering a small room at the end of the corridor, she saw a striking man sitting behind a desk. Wearing heavy robes embroidered with an unusual signet, he nodded for her to take the chair opposite. His pointed ears and upswept brows reminded Amanda of a graceful cat. She found herself staring and jumped when he suddenly looked up and said without preamble, "How well do you understand Standard?"

Her laugh ricocheted in the small room.

"I've been speaking it all my life!" she said. The man sat motionless, his face a mask.

"I'm a native speaker," Amanda stumbled, "if that's what you mean."

Clearly her attempt at humor was a misstep. She sat up straighter and let the smile fade from her face.

"How versed are you on Terran traditions and customs?"

Despite herself, Amanda let out another bubble of laughter that she tried, ineffectually, to squelch.

"I know a few," she said, bobbing her head.

"Only a few? Then you may not be suitable," the Vulcan said, his eyes narrowed.

For a moment Amanda felt a ripple of alarm. Without even trying, she was going to lose this job.

"I was joking," she said hurriedly. "I'm very familiar…with Terran customs and traditions."

Flicking his eyes to his digital notebook, the Vulcan said, "Your references seem to be in order. I am only the adjutant, but I believe the ambassador will approve your hiring. I will contact you in either case."

He looked back at his notebook and Amanda realized with a start that she was dismissed.

"Oh!" she said, standing up so quickly that her chair teetered backward and fell over. Blushing furiously, she leaned down and righted it. "Thank you, Mr.—"

"Sarek," the man said, meeting her gaze, his eyes black, flat, expressionless.

Or not quite. As she turned to leave, Amanda thought she saw a hint of amusement in his face.

A week went by, then two. At first Amanda was miffed—_he said he would call_—and then sanguine—_it's probably for the best. _She began telling the story of the interview to her friends, acting out her own clumsiness in exaggerated pantomime, deadpanning Sarek's response. It never failed to get a laugh.

And then one night as she was curled up on the sofa, a bowl of popcorn in her lap, a schmaltzy movie on the vid, her comm rang, an unfamiliar number flashing on the screen. Setting it to audio only, she answered.

"Your services are required," the voice said by way of greeting.

A crank call! Her finger poised to disconnect the line, Amanda hesitated. Something familiar niggled at the back of her mind.

"Mr. Sarek?"

"I apologize," Sarek said. "I have been told that human hearing is not as acute as Vulcan."

"I recognize your voice!" Amanda said hotly. "But it is polite to identify yourself before you start speaking!"

A pause on the other end of the line and Amanda half expected him to hang up. Once again she was sure she was going to lose the job before she had it.

"A Terran custom," Sarek said, his voice more musing than annoyed. "Fortunately I have you as my teacher. Your task will be to help me avoid future cultural misunderstandings."

To her horror, Amanda heard herself snap, "I haven't agreed to take the job! It is also a Terran custom to ask."

"I see," Sarek said, though his tone of voice suggested that he didn't. "Miss Grayson, we are offering you a position as cultural aide. Do you accept?"

Setting aside the bowl of popcorn, Amanda said, "When do you need an answer?"

"At once," Sarek said.

For less than a beat Amanda wavered. Pretending to consider it was absurd. Of course she needed the job. Without intending to, she glanced to the stack of bills on her desk nearby.

"Very well," she said. "I accept. When do I start?"

"2100 hours."

"You mean—tonight? 2100 tonight?"

"I can send a flitter for you," Sarek said. "The Vulcan delegation is hosting a reception for the Arkan Convention at our embassy. Because some of the attendees are Terran, Ambassador Somak felt that having a human host might…prevent…a repeat of certain unintentional missteps."

"But it's late! And I'm sitting here in my pajamas getting ready for bed—"

The absurdity, the ridiculous intimacy implied by her comment, made her laugh.

The other end of the comm was silent.

"Of course," she said, hiccupping with the effort of speaking soberly, "I can change. Give me some time to get ready."

"The driver will call for you in ten minutes."

"Better make it fifteen," she said. To her surprise, the comm line clicked off then, and as she headed to the bedroom, she added phone etiquette to the list of things to teach.

That evening was the first of many like it, soirees and formal receptions that highlighted what Amanda came to think of as the "odd duckiness" of the Vulcan staff—their inability or unwillingness to bend, to try to blend in, almost a defiance or stiff-backed pride about it, too, a resistance to cultural sensitivity that struck her as a contradiction of their expressed values of infinite diversity in infinite combinations.

Outside the embassy the Vulcans seemed even odder. Several times Amanda was called on to accompany one of the staff members to a gathering arranged by Federation representatives, and each time she came home exhausted, worn out by spending the evening soothing ruffled feathers and stepped-on toes, half-convinced that the Vulcan demeanor was a sham, that they knew exactly what they were doing when they stripped their conversations bare of any social niceties, when they gave a blank stare to some hapless Terran who tried to chat them up.

As she got to know him better, she sometimes called Sarek to task for it. Rather than argue with her, however, he merely heard her out, maddeningly calm, almost as if he was listening from a distance.

Not that he was inattentive. Anything but. In fact, he often startled her with his observations, some of them embarrassingly personal about her clothes, her habits.

His questions also skirted the edges of impropriety, asking, as he did, about her work outside the embassy, her family, her friendships.

Vulcan curiosity was legendary, touted as something laudable, and Amanda scolded herself for being taken aback from time to time by something Sarek asked. If she was going to call him to count for being provincial, she couldn't then prove herself more so.

"I have been meaning to ask you something," he said one afternoon as they sat in his office looking over an agenda for an upcoming meeting. "I am curious about human sexuality. My research indicates that human mating practices vary considerably, from arranged marriages to casual encounters without the expectation of any further contact. Do you yourself have a preference?"

"I beg your pardon!"

Too late she heard how shocked she sounded, how offended. Sarek, by contrast, seemed oblivious. She waited until she was sure she control her voice before she continued.

"Human sexuality is a private issue," she said. "We generally do not discuss our…preferences…with just anyone."

Sarek looked up, an unmistakable look of surprise on his face.

"Indeed," he said. "I had not noticed that sort of reticence. If anything, much of your literature, your music, your dramatizations involve sex—"

"Yes, I know," Amanda said, watching his expression shift again, this time into befuddlement. A few months ago she might not have noticed any change at all. A common lie, that Vulcans had no emotions. Hearing it bandied about in her friends' conversations riled her to the point of speaking up, speaking out.

"You're getting tiresome," her best friend Catherine told her recently. "We get it. You like working for the Vulcans."

"It's not that!" she had protested. "It's just that I don't like hearing them misrepresented. It isn't fair."

It wasn't even true that she liked working for the Vulcans. Of all the staff members, Sarek was the only one she felt she had gotten to know well—and even he was still a cipher, comfortably predictable one day and utterly surprising the next.

Like asking her about her sexual preferences. As if it mattered to him personally! As if the question were more than just some intellectual itch he wanted to scratch but was a veiled question within a question, an exploratory salvo.

That thought, she realized much later, was the beginning of her undoing.

When she told this story to Spock, to her sister Cecilia, even to Sarek, not because he needed to hear it but because she needed to tell it, Amanda omitted the courtship that followed—her astonishment at soon discovering herself in full career of a romance, the gentle coaching Sarek required, both to pleasure her physically and emotionally as well, her delight that he was willing to learn more than phone etiquette, her discovery that his unique avenues of arousal and fulfillment were ones she shared willingly, even enthusiastically. She only hinted at that part of the story she kept private, particularly when she shared it with her son, skipping ahead to what she called _"the end of our beginning"—_ the quarrel.

The quarrel started as just that—an argument whose resurrection kept a solution at bay. It began innocently enough, after an announcement that T'Mira was retiring from her position as junior ambassador to Earth. The size and scope of the Alpha quadrant meant that the junior ambassadors assigned to the scattered embassies often did double duty, not only fulfilling their own roles, but standing in for Ambassador Somak as well. At the ripe old age of 278, T'Mira wanted to spend her last years tending her garden back on Vulcan and getting to know her great-grand children.

Her successor wasn't immediately clear. Sarek wasn't the only adjutant in line for a promotion, but he was, in Amanda's estimation, the one most deserving. His initiative in hiring her, for example—that willingness to adapt to Terran cultural norms in the interest of better diplomacy should count for something.

"I agree," Sarek said, his arms tucked behind his back, one wrist clasping the other as he walked with Amanda through the front corridor of the embassy, "but the decision is not mine. Ambassador Somak will make the final determination."

"But he's hardly ever here! In the past year he's been to Earth—what? Once? Twice? How can he know everything you've done?"

"Our communiqués are quite detailed," Sarek said, his tone indicating that the matter was closed. Amanda, however, chose not to hear it.

"I've seen those communiqués," she scoffed. "Dry as dust! Where's he going to hear about the Wednesday night tutoring sessions, for instance? Not from Savil."

The Wednesday night tutoring sessions were, for all intents and purposes, the closest thing to informal parties the Vulcans ever attended. Each week Amanda hired local entertainers to perform—comics, singers, musicians, even acrobats and magicians, and then she and Sarek deconstructed the performances over a catered meal, explaining in detail the reason humans found such diversions interesting. Skeptical at first, a few Vulcans had become regular attendees, though Savil, the other adjutant, didn't bother to disguise his distaste.

"I am sure Somak will choose well," Sarek said, the strain in his voice beginning to show. This, too, Amanda chose not to hear.

"Then it's your obligation to give him all the data," she said. "Send him a copy of that letter from the mayor thanking you for talking to the city council last week. I have pictures of your visit with my students—"

"Amanda."

Not her name, but a command to cease.

They parted then, he to meet with his secretary, she to drill one of the newer staff members on Standard slang. She didn't see him before she left later in the afternoon, but when he called that night, the argument reared up again.

"I just don't understand why you aren't staking your claim," she said. "Isn't that what diplomacy's all about? The art of give and take? You've worked hard for this promotion."

What she does not say—what she does not need to say—is what is foremost on both their minds, that if Savil is made junior ambassador, the odds are high that Sarek will be transferred from Earth, replaced by someone more conservative, more tradition bound, more like Savil himself.

Someone not obviously fraternizing with a human.

Their conversation ended abruptly soon afterwards, without their usual agreement to meet later—as often as not at Amanda's apartment, with Sarek staying over. Her omission in asking him to come by—and his silence about the possibility—sent her to bed angry and tearful and more than a little shaken.

They argued on and off for weeks, and when they weren't arguing, the specter of the argument haunted them, souring their other conversations, making their outings fraught with an underlying tension that spoiled everything.

When Savil was promoted at last, it was almost a relief.

"Somak arrives next week to make the official announcement," Sarek told her over dinner at a small café near the embassy. "After that, I suspect I will be recalled to Vulcan for reassignment."

She nodded, not meeting his eyes. Instead she focused on her plate of uneaten salad, one hand idly cradling her fork, the other curled in her lap.

"I guess that's it for me, too," she said, and Sarek said, "When Somak arrives, I will recommend that you be retained as an aide. There is no reason you should lose your position if I leave."

"I wasn't talking about my job," she said, looking up at him at last.

It was a moment when she needed to hear something, anything—if not words of promise or hope, then at least words reflecting her own sorrow, showing _his_ despair, _his_ heartbreak. Until that moment she hadn't doubted that he loved her, that he had always planned some unspoken future with her.

But Sarek said nothing.

When they finished their meal she feigned a headache and went home alone.

The next morning she woke her sister Cecilia with a long phone call. Later she sent Sarek's secretary a short resignation note thanking him for the opportunity to serve the Vulcan people. By the afternoon, her few appliances and her clothes were packed, her sofa promised to her downstairs neighbor, and the refunds on her utilities deposited in her bank account. When Sarek came looking for her two days later, concerned that she wasn't answering her comm, a startled young university student answered the door chime, claiming he had just moved into the apartment and had no idea where the former tenant had gone.

It took Sarek two more days to track her down to her mother's house in Seattle.

"Who are you?" the bewildered gray-haired woman said, peering into the late afternoon sun at the tall man standing in her doorway. From the hallway Amanda heard them, her mother's voice imperious, formidable, a force to be reckoned with, someone who made the neighborhood children quake with a glance, a word.

"I'm S'chn T'gai Sarek, the Vulcan junior ambassador to Earth," Sarek announced, a note of triumph in his tone. "I've come for Amanda."

X X X X X X

"I can picture that," Chris says, leaning back in the chair next to the sofa. "But I thought you said that other guy had gotten the promotion. What happened?"

"My mother has never explained that fully," Spock said. "Just that my father took her advice and, as she called it, _staked his claim_."

"For her, too, sounds like," Chris says, grinning for the first time in several hours. He stretches his arms over his head and yawns. "I'm beat. If you don't mind, I think I'll head on to bed. There's more water in the kettle if you want some tea."

Standing and yawning again, Chris starts down the hallway when Spock calls out.

"Perhaps you should try something similar," he says.

"What do you mean?" Chris asks, and Spock adds, "Stake your claim. With Cassandra."

"Yeah, well," Chris hedges, running one hand through his hair, "if you wait too late to stake a claim, sometimes you just have to let it go."

He sounds tired and sad, but the anger Spock had detected earlier is gone. _Progress?_ He isn't sure.

"Goodnight, then," Chris says, closing the bedroom door softly behind him.

For a minute Spock sits in place, trying to hold onto the unusual feeling his mother's story has evoked in him, an uneasiness of sorts, a sense of being unsettled.

A cup of tea? He's not thirsty. He catches sight of a candle on a side table and considers lighting it as a substitute for his _asenoi_.

But he's too restless, too consumed with the unnamed emotion to meditate.

Drifting to the spare bedroom, he spies his duffel where he left it on the bed, and with a sudden motion, he unzips it and takes out his Academy PADD. His students have until tomorrow at 0100 to send their final projects, but some may have sent them early. He might as well get a start on his grading.

Sure enough, when he opens his queue he sees several projects tagged for reading. There at the head of the line is Cadet Uhura's.

He lets the stylus rest in his hand, the weight almost negligible, while he considers what to do.

And then with a swift tap of his finger, he closes the queue and starts a note to the dean, offering to teach a second level xenolinguistics course next semester—if anyone should happen to want to take it.

**A/N: Several reviewers rightly note that Spock's telling a story to Uhura in Chapter One seems premature this early in their relationship. I agree—and I chalk it up to needing to get the ball rolling! At any rate, I hope this chapter smooths the edges of that revelation so that it is believable.**

**Another concern is how to tell Amanda's story. I pondered long and hard before settling on letting her tell it in her own voice. It requires a willing suspension of disbelief from you, dear reader, that when Spock tells his version to his listener, it is less detailed that the picture revealed to you. I apologize if that's awkward. I hope it is at least entertaining.**

**Chris Thomasson, J. C. Ellison, and C'rina have chapters of their own in "What We Think We Know." **

**As for the part of the story left untold—the details of Amanda and Sarek's courtship, how Sarek beat out Savil as junior ambassador—those are Sarek's to tell. He might be convinced to—some day.**

**Thanks for reading, and double thanks for leaving a review!**


	3. Wishes and Lies

**Chapter Three: Wishes and Lies**

**Disclaimer: I love 'em like they're mine, but, alas, these characters don't belong to me.**

_Be careful what you wish for._

A thoroughly human sentiment, a cautionary tale that has little relevance for Vulcans.

The first time he heard his mother say it, Spock pointed this out.

"Desiring something without considering the consequences would be illogical," he said. "I have given this due diligence."

From across the table his cousin Rachel guffawed. At five, she was a year younger and therefore less experienced than he was, so Spock dismissed her laughter. More worrying was the response of his older cousins, Anna and Chris, who sent some signal to each other with their eyes.

Amanda lifted one eyebrow—_a habit she had picked up from his father?_—and nodded to her sister Cecila who stood near the kitchen table, a carton of ice cream in her hand.

"Are you sure?" his aunt Cecila asked. "I've cut up some fresh pineapple for you instead."

Spock looked at the bowls of ice cream sitting before everyone else at the table. He nodded.

Shrugging, Cecilia plopped a scoop of ice cream in his bowl.

Cautiously, Spock leaned forward and picked up his spoon. Already the white knob of ice cream had started to melt, a sheen of liquid puddling in the bottom of the bowl. Touching the edge of his spoon to the scoop, he pressed slightly and was surprised at the initial resistance and then the sudden give. He lifted his spoon and looked up. Everyone was watching him.

The ice cream was shockingly cold. It was also so sweet, so cloying, that his first instinct was to spit it out. One glance at his mother was enough to force him to swallow instead. He felt his stomach lurch in rebellion.

Rachel burst out laughing again—which could only mean that he had let his distaste show. His face flushed with embarrassment.

"See," his mother said, "I warned you."

_But everyone else likes it_—he thought across their bond. And then, without being able to stop himself, he let her feel his wordless frustration at always being apart, of being different.

The next time his mother warned him to _be careful what you wish for_, he was months away from his _kahs-wan_—eager to face the challenges but scared, too, with a low-level anxiety that sometimes bloomed into real terror when he overheard tales the older boys at school told—stories about _le-matya _attacks, or desert flash floods. When he told his father that he was being excluded from the advanced physical training classes, he felt Sarek's anger and was relieved when he confronted the headmaster.

The night after Spock's first _suus mahna_ class, his mother lingered at his bedside, brushing his hair back from his forehead, visibly wincing at the bruise already darkening his brow. Through her fingers he felt her sorrow—and yes, her worry for him, her reluctance to allow him to undertake the _kahs-wan _at all. How could he reassure her that far from being distressed about the difficulty of the class, he was grateful for it, sure that the odds of his survival were increasing exponentially with every blow he learned to parry?

"I want this," he said simply, knowing that his mother would see through his words to the complexity of things—his willingness to endure the training, his determination to undergo the _kahs-wan_, his need to fit in, or rather, not to be so obviously different.

His mother never said the words again. She didn't need to. He carries them with him, the way humans speak of hearing the voice of a conscience.

_Be careful what you wish for._

He knows now what he didn't know at six, at seven, that no one can anticipate every consequence.

That sometimes what seems desirable turns into a peculiar form of agony.

Like now.

In some ways, his biolinguistics class is satisfying, eight students genuinely interested in the topic—a departure from the large introductory xenolinguistics classes he has been teaching in the language department.

But it is a misery, too.

Eight students sitting around a conference table once a week, discussing in detail a wide range of topics, debating the finer points of the intersection of biology and language, up close, personal.

Eight students including _her._

What did he expect? He is, after all, the one who volunteered to write the curriculum, to teach the class.

Now he both dreads and looks forward to every Wednesday afternoon, energized by the intellect and energy of his students, wearied by the necessity of controlling every thought, of keeping his expression neutral, of being—as he should be—the consummate instructor.

As she does every Wednesday, Cadet Uhura arrives first, setting her backpack carefully on the floor against the wall before unzipping it to remove her PADD. Sometimes J.C. Ellison is with her, though more often now they arrive separately. _An indication of some distance in their relationship? _ In class they still seem friendly with each other, with an easy camaraderie that Spock meditates about in the evenings, cross-legged in front of his _asenoi_.

"Look what I found," she says, slipping into a seat next to where he sits at the head of the table. She tilts her PADD toward him, scrolling with her thumb until he can see a page of a news update. "Here," she says, and careful to avoid her fingertips, he takes the PADD from her and scans it.

It concerns the recent aOpli application for Federation membership, detailing the admission council's difficulty communicating with them. Handing the PADD back, he notices her trying to catch his eye and he pauses.

"Maybe they need to call in your mother to help," she says, grinning.

Fortunately another student arrives then, the bustle and noise sparing him from having to reply.

Once all the students arrive the class begins. Today one of the seniors presents the available research on the inability of some species to lie or be deceptive. An issue of language, or an artifact of biology? The students debate with an enthusiasm that makes their words sound heated at times.

"If your language has no metaphors, no abstractions, then of course you won't be able to lie," J. C. says. "After all, you have to be able to imagine something other than the truth, something different from reality, in order to create a lie."

"But their language is limited by their biological abilities," another student adds, and sensing that J.C. wants to respond, Spock waits to weigh in.

"I'm not saying that isn't true," J.C. says. "After all, even on Earth, humans are the only animals with the brain capacity for language."

"What about the great apes?" Uhura pipes up, and J.C. turns to her and says, "Only when they've been coached, and even then, the jury is still out on whether or not they understand what they are communicating."

"Bees," Uhura says, and Spock hears J.C. expel a breath.

_Exasperation?_

"Being able to waggle around and somehow give directions from the hive to a honey source isn't language as we know it," J.C. says.

"As we know it," Uhura says, patting one hand on the table like an exclamation point. "But by any definition, they are able to communicate."

Someone chuckles and Uhura continues.

"Besides, you're missing the point. Some of you are arguing that the ability to lie is the result of sufficient brain power. Some of you are arguing that the ability to lie is the result of a rich, complex language. Either way, you are suggesting that those species that either do not or cannot lie are somehow deficient. That they lack complex brains or complex language. What about Vulcans? They can't lie, but would you argue that they are less capable than humans in their ability to think or express themselves?"

She directs her gaze around the room at her classmates, ending up looking directly at Spock.

With a jolt, he realizes that she expects him to respond.

"Vulcans do not lie," he says slowly, and from the corner of his eye he sees Uhura nod at J. C. "But that does not preclude their being able to, should the need arise."

"Oh!" she says, a note of embarrassment in her voice. He's not surprised. He's heard more than one person allude to the presumed honesty of Vulcans, including Vulcans themselves.

"But," he adds, "it would have to be an unusual circumstance, and only when logic dictates no other course."

"So," Uhura says, "for instance, a human might lie about forgetting someone's birthday, but a Vulcan wouldn't."

"A Vulcan would not forget someone's birthday."

"That was just an example," she says, darting her eyes in his direction. "What _would _a Vulcan lie about? Or when? You said it would have to be an unusual circumstance."

The other students are listening to the exchange with odd expressions on their faces. Spock considers his next words carefully.

"To protect someone's life," he says, "or to insure someone's safety. He might lie then."

"Only then? Captured by pirates, maybe," Uhura says, laughing. "He might lie to avoid walking the plank."

"Precisely," Spock says. "Or to prevent someone else from having to walk it."

"Commander," she says, "can't you think of a real example? I'm being serious. I want to know."

"I am being serious, Cadet."

"I see," she says, ducking her head and shooting a look across the table to J.C.

Despite her earlier assertion, ironically she thinks he is lying now. That revelation dawns on him suddenly.

The room becomes unbearably hot.

"Until next week," he says abruptly, startling at least one cadet who glances at her wrist chronometer. The rest of the students begin gathering their materials and scooting their chairs away from the table.

His office is on the third floor, one floor up from the classroom, and once everyone leaves, he takes the stairs two at a time. From the top of the stairwell he sees Cadet Uhura standing outside his office door. For a fraction of a second he considers retreating, but she looks up and sees him before he can.

"Commander," she says when he draws near, "I wanted to apologize."

Tilting his head at her, he reaches to the door and unlocks it, pushing it open and waiting for her to enter the office first. She slips easily into the seat at the side of his desk, and after adjusting the temperature controls on the wall, he slides out his chair and sits.

"Explain," he says, lacing his fingers together.

"I didn't mean to embarrass you in class," she says. She glances up briefly, as if to judge whether to continue. "I didn't mean to sound like I doubted what you were saying. It's just…well, I've always heard—"

Her words grind to a halt and she looks away. He realizes he is giving her what his mother calls _the look_, the kind of scrutiny that crosses the line from intense to intrusive. With an effort, he blinks and shifts his expression.

"Your confusion is understandable," he says. "And embarrassment is a human emotion."

What he does not say—allowing her to believe otherwise—is that Vulcans share that human sense of shame, that same desire to avoid public loss of face. If they appear imperturbable to others, they recognize the telltale flush of wounded pride in each other.

As if she can read his mind, she meets his eyes and grins.

_Didn't he turn down the temperature controls when he entered the room? _The room is so warm that he is tempted to run his finger around the inside of his collar.

"I hate stereotypes," she says, leaning forward so that her ponytail swings over her shoulder. That tiny motion stirs the air with her scent: soap and something mildly floral. "I guess I'm the one who's embarrassed, for not even questioning what I've always heard."

The heat has dried his mouth and he is forced to swallow—twice—before venturing an answer.

"As I said, your confusion is understandable. As a rule, Vulcans do not lie."

"Except when threatened by pirates," she says, her tone mock serious, her face lit with a smile. He unlaces his fingers and relaxes his shoulders.

_Be careful what you wish for._

He silences his mother's warning. What harm can a friendly conversation do?

"_Especially _when threatened by pirates," he says, a note of teasing slipping into his words. "As you will see."

X X X X X X X

_Be careful what you wish for._

Amanda pulled the thin blanket up over her shoulder and curled her arm under her head. How typical for a Vulcan transport ship to have such poor accommodations—a travel cabin with a hard, pillowless bunk for a bed, a meal area too cramped for socializing.

In the dim light of the small cabin she could see Spock sitting cross-legged on the floor reading a palm-sized PADD. At nine years old he was taller than many other boys his age yet slighter in build, holding himself with the self-conscious posture of someone who knew he was being observed.

For three days they had shared the uncomfortable quarters in the Vulcan cruiser, Amanda already regretting her decision to come.

What had she been thinking when she told Sarek that her life was too routine, that the predictability was beginning to wear on her?

That when he was away on a long diplomatic junket, she missed his physical presence—an idea that both amused him and made their bond quietly thrum?

That Spock needed a break, too, from the constant vigilance that defined his life at school?

Now here they were, between Vulcan and the remote outpost where Sarek had been stationed for 62 days already, he and his staff charged with finding a settlement between Vulcan miners and pirates from a nearby sister planet.

Until a few years ago, the mining outpost had been a profitable, efficient business run by a Vulcan trade syndicate specializing in rare metals and minerals. A series of droughts on the sister planet, Gnia, correlated to an uptick in piracy—the desperate Gnians commandeering vessels leaving the mining outpost and selling the cargo to interstellar traffickers.

Establishing communications with the pirates had proven a challenge, but Sarek managed to convince two of the major players to discuss a trade of sorts—economic and agricultural aid from Vulcan in exchange for a cessation of the attacks.

"Another month," Sarek had predicted when Amanda asked how much longer he would be away. "Now that the attacks have stopped, we are progressing more quickly."

"That doesn't sound quick to me!" Amanda complained. "I have half a mind to hop on the next transport and come there!"

She had been teasing when she said it, expressing her longing to see him rather than actually sketching out a plan of action, but when Sarek nodded and said, "Do," she took that as all the encouragement she needed.

_They would be together soon! The excitement of travel, the pleasure of a reunion. _She booked the first available transport.

The trip from Vulcan couldn't have been more routine—nor Sarek any more remote, so busy that when Amanda dipped her toe into the steady stream of his thoughts through their bond, she backed away, careful not to bother him.

Even Spock seemed restless on the ship. More than once Amanda nagged him to leave their cabin, to talk to some of the other children onboard. As far as she could tell, the ship was carrying more than twenty passengers, almost all of them Vulcan women with their children, presumably the families of the miners on the outpost. At least two of the boys appeared to be about Spock's age, but when Amanda questioned him, Spock said he didn't have time to find out.

"You have plenty of time!" Amanda protested. "We're going to be on this transport almost a week!"

But she didn't press him further. No use compounding his loneliness with a failed sense of duty to her wishes.

She shifted on the hard bunk again and closed her eyes. An instant later a thud shook the ship, and then another. She sat up.

From his position on the floor, Spock looked over at her.

"Lights," she said, and the cabin lights flickered once and then went off. Another thud rang through the ship.

"Spock," Amanda said, the urgency in her voice echoing her alarm, and she felt his hand touching her own. "Stay close."

The ship shook hard and Amanda grabbed the edge of her bunk to keep from toppling over. The emergency lights in the hallway came on, leaking a ribbon of light under the cabin door.

In the distance she could hear metal on metal, and then the sound of rushing footsteps. Before she could make her way across the darkened room, she heard shouting in the narrow corridor, and then the cabin door slid open.

In the doorway stood a stocky, gray-skinned alien, backlit and difficult to see, though Amanda realized he was a Gnian, like the group Sarek had been negotiating with for weeks. She recognized the distinctive wrinkled appearance, the short antenna-like projections on his—its?—head, the bipedal stance and two forelimbs from images Sarek had shared with her.

The Gnian made a series of buzzing noises. The PADD in Spock's hand instantly translated the sounds into barely passable Vulcan.

"Exit this area," the Gnian said.

Not moving, Amanda countered, "Who are you?"

"That is not your concern. If you do not comply with my request, you will be eliminated."

Glancing down at Spock, Amanda took his PADD and slipped it into her pocket, put her hand on his back and shepherded him toward the door. The Gnian pirate moved back into the hall and she and Spock followed. Already a crowd was gathering there, the other passengers and crew walking slowly toward the cargo bay.

Inside the large, open bay, six gray-skinned pirates were motioning to the Vulcans to sit on the floor against one wall. One pirate waved a thin black rod in the air. Another was attaching small pieces of metal or plastic on the control console at the far end of the room.

The pirate holding the thin rod gestured to Amanda to move away from the crowd, and she took a single step forward.

"You are not like the others," he said. "We have no need for you."

Once before in her life Amanda had a premonition that she was about to come to serious harm. Late one night she hopped aboard what she thought was a deserted hoverbus for a short ride from the university library to her apartment complex. No sooner had the bus doors whooshed shut behind her and she started down the aisle to a seat than she saw a man crouched near the automatic navigation console. Images of a battered woman came to mind—a picture from a recent news vid—and too late Amanda recalled hearing about an attack on a passenger a few days earlier.

The expression on her face must have given her away. The man stood up and said, "Getting scared?"

Terrified was closer to the truth, but Amanda took a breath and shook her head.

"What do you want?" she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking. "All I have is a transport card. I don't even carry credits with me. I'm just a university student."

"Shut up," he said, moving more quickly toward her than she could have imagined. She felt his hands circle her wrists and he pulled her roughly off her feet, toppling them both into the nearest seat, his knee pressing her thigh.

She screamed then, or tried to. The man let go of one of her wrists and she saw him swing his arm back to hit her.

The unmanned bus lurched to a stop and the doors whooshed open. The sound of distant laughter, conversation, normal life, drifted in.

Suddenly she was alone on her back in the seat, the man racing down the corridor of the bus. As she pulled herself upright, she caught a glimpse of him shoving his way past the group of teenagers getting on.

"Hey!" one of the teens protested, but the man was already gone.

A close call, and one that made her leery of hoverbuses for a long time.

Now here she was facing someone who might as well have asked the same mocking phrase: _Getting scared?_

"You _do_ need me," she improvised. "I'm the only one here who can help you."

Her words gave the Gnian pause. He lowered the rod and said, "Explain."

From behind her, Amanda felt Spock inching closer.

_Don't!_ she thought, and he stopped.

"Are you the leader of this group?" she asked. "My words are only for your leader."

By this time she had attracted the attention of the other Gnians. The one who had been attaching something to the control console spoke.

"Say your words to me, then. But be quick about it."

"You are the leader?"

"I am the _ja'al_."

"You are in charge of this group?"

"I am the story keeper. If you have words, tell them to me. Otherwise, you are not needed."

Again the short hairs on the back of Amanda's neck rose. She had to tread carefully here.

"I am the…story keeper…for this group," she said, waving her hand to the Vulcans sitting behind her. They were watching her closely, quietly. One mother cradled an infant in the crook of her arm. A toddler leaned heavily, sleepily, against the shoulder of an elderly white-haired woman. Spock still stood a few meters away.

"That is why you are different?"

"Yes," Amanda said. "I am not from Vulcan but from Earth."

"I do not know of Earth."

"It is very far from here," she said. "I have lived on Vulcan for many years."

From the corner of her eye, Amanda saw one of the Gnians shift his position. _Uneasiness? Impatience? _She had to hurry up.

"You are from Gnia," she said. A statement only, and the pirates didn't answer. She hadn't expected them to. From what Sarek had told her, part of the difficulty of communicating with the Gnians originated in the structure of their language.

"You would find it poetic," he said, "but to me it is excessively florid."

"You mean you straight-talking Vulcans are getting a headache wading through so many symbols."

"And metaphors," Sarek added, ignoring her tweak at his expense. "The inhabitants use narratives to communicate. Quite inefficient. And, as you said, wearying."

"I have heard a story," she said, looking directly at the pirate, noticing for the first time his small black eyes like glass buttons or like the eyes of sharks back on Earth. She gave an involuntary shiver. "It is about how the Vulcan people sent shipments of food and plants to replace the crops that were lost in the recent droughts on your planet."

To her astonishment, the Gnian waved his forelimbs in an unmistakable gesture of impatience.

"That story will not come to pass! The _ja'al_ who told it to you is not the true _ja'al._"

For a moment Amanda was buffaloed, not sure what to say next.

"Then tell me the true story," she said, holding her breath.

"The true story is that the Gnian people are dying! Each year our young ones die before reaching the age of motion. The land lies fallow without moisture. The clans attack each other and steal the stores of grain, and they send their young warriors into the skies in search of sustenance.

"The Vulcans sent their _ja'al_ to trick us into submission, and some of the clans listened to their soft words and gave up their weapons. But the clan of Saah chose another path. The _ja'al _of the clan chose twelve of the best warriors and gave us his finest cruiser. He told us to forget the ships carrying metals and to capture the ones carrying what the Vulcans value most. Then they will give us what we need to bring life back to our world."

"So that's why you attacked us? You are going to hold us for ransom?" Amanda asked.

Instead of answering, the Gnian waved his limbs in the air again and Amanda felt Spock's immediate alarm.

"No!" she shouted, turning toward him, watching him fall to floor as if he were a puppet with the strings cut. Behind him, the Vulcans sitting on the floor slumped to the left and right, unconscious.

"What are you doing?" she cried out, but she already knew. For the first time in years she was alone in her own mind, the steady presence of Sarek gone, the intense connection to Spock like a light snuffed out.

And then she felt herself falling, and breaking her descent with one hand, she slid until her cheek hit the cold floor, her eyes closing of their own accord.

She woke hours later in one of the passenger cabins, her mind still silent.

_Where are you? _she called out, but her thoughts bumped up into a wall, almost like a physical barrier.

"Tell me your story," she heard a voice say. Sitting up quickly, Amanda pressed a hand to her head.

"What have you done with the others?" she asked, peering at the Gnian pirate who stood near the cabin door. "Where is my son?"

The Gnian moved his head from side to side. Frustrated, Amanda pulled Spock's PADD from her pocket and tapped the screen. The pirate moved his head again.

"I don't understand what you mean," Amanda said, "and my translator doesn't either. Please speak. Where is my son?"

"Tell me your story," the Gnian said. Amanda huffed.

"First I must know about the others. Are they safe? Where are they?"

The Gnian said nothing and Amanda tried again.

"The passengers? Are they in the cargo bay?"

Still nothing.

"Once," Amanda said, "a group of Gnian…warrriors…boarded a civilian transport and took the passengers to the cargo bay. They used some sort of dampening device to contain the telepathic abilities of the Vulcans. One of the passengers was a human from Earth. When she awoke, she asked the warrior to tell her of the other passengers."

"The others wait their destinies," the Gnian said. "Our _ja'al_ has contacted the _ja'al _of the Vulcans. If they agree, the passengers will be traded for goods and services to free my world from starvation."

"The Vulcans will not negotiate with pirates who have taken hostages," Amanda said quickly. "The Vulcan…_ja'al_…will give you the goods and services you need, but not in exchange for the passengers."

"This is not a true story. No one gives without a trade."

"It _is_ a true story. I know the _ja'al_ of the Vulcans. He does not lie."

"All men lie. False stories are as plentiful as true. Only a _ja'al _can discern the difference."

"Are you a _ja'al_?"

"My _ja'al _attends to other business," the Gnian said, and Amanda had the definite sense that he shrugged with indifference or resentment.

"If the _ja'al_ is the only one who can tell the difference between lies and truth—between true stories and false—then how can you say my story is false if you are not the _ja'al_?"

For a moment she was sure she had gone too far. The Gnian grew very still and she felt his unblinking snakelike eyes on her.

"Come with me," he said abruptly, backing out the cabin door. Amanda slid off the bunk and hurried after him.

She had never been on the bridge of the Vulcan transport and was taken aback at how cramped and dirty it seemed. Two Gnian pirates stood at what she assumed were the navigation and helm controls. The Gnian she had spoken to earlier in the cargo bay sat in the captain's chair. He swiveled his thick neck and turned his gaze on her.

"Tell your story," he said.

"As I told this…warrior," Amanda said, indicating the Gnian beside her, "the Vulcans will not pay a ransom for the passengers. They do not deal with hostage-takers. Your plan will fail."

The other Gnians on the bridge were watching, Amanda noticed. The Gnian in the captain's chair said, "This story is true. So they have said."

"You've heard from the Vulcans?"

"It is as you say. They will not trade."

"Then you must let us go," Amanda said, trying to sound reasonable. "The Vulcans will help your world—"

"The passengers are of no use to us," the _ja'al_ said. "We will eliminate them and sell this transport."

"What do you mean, eliminate them? You aren't going to harm them!"

"They are of no use. If we return them, the Vulcan _ja'al _will tell the other clans that we are weak."

"The Vulcans will help you!"

"The Vulcans are weak. The weak cannot help us."

Amanda crossed her arms.

"Why do you say that the Vulcans are weak?"

Around her, the Gnians who had been following the conversation turned back to their stations. The captain flicked his eyes away. She was being dismissed.

"Take her to the cargo bay," the captain said. "Eject them all."

The pirate who had brought her to the bridge lifted a black rod into the air and took a move toward her.

"Wait!" she cried out. "I want to hear your story of the Vulcans! My story differs from yours. It may be that I do not know the true one."

"Tell that again," the captain said, and Amanda uncrossed her arms and moved closer to him, away from the Gnian with the rod.

"I have lived for many years with the Vulcans," she said, "but I do not know the story you tell about them. I will trade my story for yours. You may find a way to profit from the information."

Running one forelimb across the antennae on his head, the captain made an odd buzzing that the universal translator in her pocket didn't interpret.

"Very well," he said. The Gnian with the rod lowered it. The crew members turned around again, their eyes glittering in the overhead light.

_When the ja'al speaks, everyone listens_, Amanda thought.

"Many years ago the miners came to our sister world," the captain began. "That was back in the time of life and beauty, before the rains stopped. We had no need to leave Gnia then, for she was like a mother who provided us with all that we could desire.

"From afar we watched the miners, the Vulcans, and saw that they were a strange people, always working in the ground. We monitored the words they sent to other places and learned that they are weak, that they have no warriors, that their rulers govern with words only. They tell no stories but speak to the surface of things. They were no threat to us, and we left them to their peace.

"But when Gnia sickened and began to die, we did as all warriors should do. We cared for our clans by taking from the weak. The Vulcan ships were taken and the cargo sold. Eventually the Vulcans launched fewer and fewer ships, until there were not enough for all the clans.

"The Vulcans did not fight as true warriors do but sent false _ja'als_ to tell us lies. Some clans believed the lies, but the clan of Saah would not be tricked. That is why we took the ship with the Vulcan pair-bonds and small ones, hoping to trade for the things our clan needs to survive.

"If the Vulcans cared for their own people, they would trade for them, but they are too weak. They are willing to lose you, to lose this ship, rather than help us."

As the Gnian captain spoke, Amanda's mind was racing. If she could only talk to Sarek! Surely he could convince the captain that the offer of economic aid was genuine, that returning the passengers unharmed was in the best interest of everyone.

"Now I will tell you my story," Amanda said slowly. "The Vulcans _do_ care for their people, as you do—"

A rustle traveled around the bridge, like a wave. Although she couldn't read their facial expressions, Amanda was certain that her words met with disapproval among her listeners. Clearly the Gnians didn't like hearing their _ja'al_ contradicted. Perhaps she needed to rethink her approach.

She started again.

"As you see, I am not like them. You were right when you said that their words are not like yours, that where you tell stories, they speak only of things, of facts."

She paused and gauged her reception. The Gnians watched her closely. _Good. At least they were paying attention._

"That is why they have made me their one true_ ja'al_. I am the story keeper for the Vulcans. If you want to know their true selves, you must ask me."

"If you are the true _ja'al_," the captain said, "then why are you not the leader?"

"The Vulcans do not value the story keeper as you do," she said. "They keep me in servitude, forcing me to entertain them with tales of their ancestors. If they knew I was telling their story to you, they would kill me."

The Gnians made the same odd buzzing noise that went untranslated.

"This cannot be a true story," the captain said. "They are not warriors."

"You have been deceived," Amanda said, her voice taking on a conspiratorial tone. "To outsiders they appear gentle, peaceful, their words full of logic and reason. But I know the truth about them. On their homeworld they are ruthless fighters. When they go to war, they kill in such large numbers that the victors wade knee deep in the blood of their slain enemies."

She stopped for a moment and swallowed.

"Many years ago a Vulcan warrior came to my world disguised as an ambassador, a man committed to peace. My family believed his lies and relaxed their vigilance. One night he lured me to a transport station and took me captive against my will. He told me that if I did not accept him as a husband, he would retaliate against my family and destroy them all. That is why I live on Vulcan still, why I have been forced to bear him a child."

"Barbaric!" Amanda heard one of the Gnian's hiss.

"The other passengers on this transport are some of his property as well—his wives and children. When he knows that you are responsible for kidnapping his family and stealing his property, he will sweep down upon you like a storm, scorching you and your world with fire and lightning. The other clans will tell tales for generations about the end of the Saah, how you provoked the fearsome retribution of Sarek of Vulcan."

The Gnian captain gave a visible start.

"Sarek," he said. "That is the name. This is a true story."

"Oh, no!" Amanda said, putting her hand to her lips. "He's been in contact with you! He knows!"

"He said he would not negotiate for the release of the passengers," the captain said, and Amanda blew out a loud breath of air.

"Of course he won't! He's already planning his attack. Once you've made a Vulcan mad, there's nothing you can say to change his mind. If you thought he was a man of peace, that's what he wanted you to think. He expects to catch you off guard."

The captain pressed his forelimb on the chair panel and the lighting in the bridge dimmed immediately into emergency mode.

"If he attacks, we will be prepared."

"Believe me," Amanda said, "you won't see him coming. Sarek's attack force will scramble your sensors and render your own weapons useless. Your only hope is to contact him first, to appease him by returning the passengers."

For a moment, the Gnian captain sat motionless. Amanda shifted uneasily from one foot to the other.

"Raise him," the captain said at last, and from the communications console, a high-pitched whine began as the Gnian stationed there turned one button, then another.

On the forward viewscreen, the star field fluttered softly and was replaced by an image of Sarek's face.

"I am the _ja'al _of the Saah clan," the captain said. "I have your story keeper."

Amanda felt a shove—one of the Gnians pushing her closer to the captain's chair. She watched a cloud pass over Sarek's expression.

"Amanda," he said simply, and she nodded.

"Yes, Sarek," she said. "Spock and I are here with the rest of the passengers."

"Are you harmed?"

"I have not seen the others in a few hours, but I believe everyone is okay."

Seeing Sarek's face without being able to feel him across their bond was disorienting, like being dizzy or lost. She frowned and pressed her hand to her forehead.

"There's some kind of device—" she began, but Sarek interrupted her.

"I surmised as much."

His eyes flicked away to the Gnian and he said, "What do you want?"

"He means," she said quickly to the captain, "how would you prefer to die? Do you want him to blow up your ship? Or do you want to face death honorably, with an execution?"

She glanced up at the viewscreen and noted Sarek's raised eyebrow.

The Gnian's eyes were on her. She said, "If you will permit me, I may be able to help you."

The captain leaned forward and lowered his voice.

"How do I know you won't tell him to destroy us immediately? Why should I trust you? You are his property, his _ja'al_."

Amanda paused as if thinking.

"You have no choice. Sarek has his own fleet of ships, many which are probably on their way here right now."

The captain leaned back. Amanda turned toward the viewscreen.

"Sarek," she said, "don't try to lie anymore. The Gnians know that I am your story keeper, that I have told them your true story."

"My true story?"

"How you took me against my will from my home years ago and threatened my family."

"Indeed."

"And how in battle you are fierce and merciless, how you have killed many enemies with your cloaked ships."

"You told them that?"

"And how even now you are planning the destruction of the clan that kidnapped your servants and your wives."

"My wives?"

"I know you are not known for your tender mercies," Amanda said, and Sarek frowned—minutely, to be sure, but a definite knitting together of his brows. "Like you, these…warriors…respect strength above all else. But if you can see your way to spare them, your property and family will go unharmed."

"Our sloop is tethered to this transport," the captain said. "We will vacate this ship if you allow us safe conduct."

"Is that so much to ask?" Amanda said, folding her hands together like a supplicant.

"Amanda, I don't know—"

"Sarek! I beg you! Take out your anger on me, if you must, for revealing your true self to these people, but let them go! Please?"

They hadn't always been bonded. Surely he could read her, could understand what she was communicating with her eyes, her pursed lips. She tipped her head to the side and said, "Please?"

"Since you are my…story keeper," he said, the slightest hesitation in his voice, "I will do as you ask."

Then to the captain he said, "Reverse the dampening field and leave the transport immediately. If no one is harmed, I will not…retaliate."

The captain let his forelimb slice through the air like a knife and the transmission ended abruptly. He stood and walked swiftly to the door of the bridge, the other crew following him.

For a moment Amanda stood in place, and then she, too, left the bridge, making her way to the cargo bay where the Vulcans stood waiting, as if they had known she was on the way.

Which in retrospect they might have. As she reached out to unlock the cargo bay door, she felt her vision wobble briefly. There was Sarek in her thoughts again, a rush of relief flooding through them both.

Spock, too, was present in her awareness. When she entered the room, he walked to her immediately. For once he didn't object when she ruffled his hair.

"Remind me to be more careful," she told Sarek a day after the transport finally reached the mining outpost. They were lying facing each other on a narrow bed in the tiny room that passed for their quarters. Spock was out exploring the mining complex—and with a gentle nudge, she encouraged him to stay out for a while longer.

"In what way have you been careless?" Sarek asked, pulling her closer until she had to tip her head back to look up into his face.

"By what I wished for," she said. "Here I was thinking I needed some adventure in my life. From now on I'm going to be content with reading a good book."

"Your capacity for lying is prodigious," Sarek said, running the fingers of his right hand down her arm, sending a shiver up her spine.

"It was necessary," she said, pretending offense. "Even you lied to the pirates."

"It was no lie to say that you are my story keeper," he said, rolling her onto her back. "At any rate, I mean the lie you are telling now. About being content with a book."

She tugged up the hem of his shirt in open invitation.

"I see what you mean," she said.

X X X X X X

Spock takes only a few minutes to tell the story—sketching it out rather than giving much detail—but when he finishes, Cadet Uhura's eyes are shining, her elbows planted on his desk, her chin resting on her open palms.

"I was joking about the pirates," she says in wonder. "What an adventure!"

"The incident lasted less than a day," Spock says. "It hardly qualifies as an adventure."

"If being kidnapped doesn't qualify as excitement enough for you," she says, lowering one arm to his desk, "then I'd like to know what does!"

She catches herself mid-laugh, as if realizing how suggestive her words sound. Her eyes widen and her breath hitches once, twice.

To his astonishment, a wave of heat floods his torso, leaks up and under his collar and slides down his legs, leaving him uncomfortably congested and aroused. His heart hammers so hard that he hears it in his ears.

"Commander, I—"

"Cadet Uhura—"

Their words tangle in an instance, like two notes in a chord. They fall silent at the same moment, and he nods for her to continue.

"I keep taking up your time!" she says with forced cheer.

Reading human expressions has never come easy for him. As well as he knows his mother, he occasionally accepts her words at face value when she wants him to recognize irony, or he confuses her worry with anger, or misses it entirely.

So when Cadet Uhura stands and lingers for a moment beside his desk, he is so busy giving her _the look_—struggling to parse the meaning of her bottom lip pinched between her teeth and the crease between her brows—that he almost misses her next words.

"I wish—" she says, and he stops breathing.

"I mean," she amends, "thank you. For the story."

As she turns to leave he calls out, "It was nothing," but that is a lie and he knows it. Sharing a story is always something.

**A/N: This is a labor of love. Thanks to everyone who reads it…and a special thanks to everyone who takes the trouble to leave a review. Your reviews are loving little breadcrumbs that help other readers find this story and decide whether or not to take a chance on it!**


	4. Hunger

**Chapter Four: Hunger  
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**Disclaimer: I own nothing here except the mischief.  
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As a rule, Spock doesn't eat in the student cafeteria. The noise, the crowd, the unappetizing smells—his reasons are legion, logical. Only rarely does he bother with a midday meal anyway, and when he does, he brings yogurt or salad or leftover soup from his apartment and eats in his office.

But for three days now he's eaten nothing, his refrigerator empty except for some expired _kasa_ juice. Normally he's more careful to keep his pantry stocked, stopping by the local deli across the street from his apartment or making the longer trip into town to a grocery store.

For some reason he's been uncharacteristically distracted this week. Letting his food supply get low. Neglecting to answer mail promptly. Almost missing a department meeting yesterday afternoon.

Undoubtedly the pressures of ending the semester are to blame. Grading the final exams. Waiting to hear about a grant for a proposed summer project. Firing his unsatisfactory student aide. Looking for a replacement.

Anyone would forget to eat.

"You look pale, Commander," his Andorian colleague, Professor Artura, had said as he brewed a cup of tea in the break room earlier. "Perhaps you need something?"

Spock had been ready to deny it, but a wave of lightheadedness forced him to sit at one of the round tables, his hands cupped around his mug of cooling tea.

"I've noticed that you've been fasting," Professor Artura said, sidling into the seat across from Spock. "Is this a Vulcan custom?"

Spock looked closely at the Andorian. Thin like most Andorians, the elderly professor was slightly stooped, his fringe of white hair brushed forward into uneven bangs. When he talked his stubby tentacles bobbled, the way humans moved their hands to communicate.

"I have simply been busy," Spock said, taking a sip of his tea.

"Then perhaps you will join me for lunch?" the professor said. "Since classes are over?"

For a moment Spock considered refusing—but the truth was that he _did_ need to eat something, and the cafeteria—noisy, crowded, smelly—was the closest and fastest place for suitable nourishment. It was…logical.

Now he stands aside as Professor Artura shuffles slowly into the cafeteria ahead of him. As he expects, the noise level is unpleasant, breaking over his ears in waves of buzzing conversations, sudden laughter, the metallic clink of silverware on china, the screech of chair legs skittering against the floor.

The bustle of students at the food lines is almost dizzying. Narrowing his focus, Spock follows Professor Artura to the salad station and picks up a plate.

"At home," the Andorian says as he lifts lettuce to his plate with tongs, "this sort of cuisine is rare. The only places where vegetables can grow are in caverns heated by underground geysers. Clan leaders—the truly wealthy—they can afford it. The rest of us are forced to subsist on animal flesh. As you can imagine, the meat of animals adapted to an ice environment is tough—almost indigestible—"

Fighting a wave of nausea, Spock carries his plate and picks his way across the floor to a relatively empty table. Professor Artura stops to speak to two of his students, and while he does, Spock scans the room.

For _her_.

It's something he does whenever he is surrounded by students. Walking across the commons. Entering the language lab. Watching a group of cadets speaking animatedly to each other in the entry hall of the administration building.

A quick flick of his eyes—a reflex, nothing more. Cadet Uhura is such an outstanding student—unparalleled, really, in her ability to distinguish subtleties of sound—that his interest in her career is understandable.

"Forgive me, Commander," Professor Artura says, setting his plate on the table and settling into a seat. "My students heard about the protest and wanted to make sure I was unharmed."

Spock pauses, his fork in midair. _Protest?_ Professor Artura's antennae curl down and he frowns.

"You did hear?" the Andorian says. "About the protest outside headquarters yesterday?"

"I have been busy," Spock says, realizing that twice he's explained himself this way today.

"Ah," Professor Artura says, picking up his own fork and spearing some salad, "an unpleasant group of xenophobes. They're upset about the Farriri refugees. Made some noise about it yesterday—waved some signs and yelled a bit. I was coming out of a meeting at HQ at the time and ended up on the vids last night. But you didn't see it. Because you were busy."

The Andorian's characteristic lisp is more pronounced than usual and Spock darts him a glance.

"The last time I spoke to my father," Spock says, "he suggested the possibility that the Farriri situation would generate controversy."

"Yes," Professor Artura says, his antennae waggling. "Asylum seekers always do."

The professor's words so closely echo Sarek's that Spock is startled. When he and his father had spoken a week ago, Sarek went into great detail about a freighter found disabled outside the Farriri star system, the survivors asserting that they were victims of an attack by a cloaked ship from their own government.

On patrol nearby, the_ Lexington_ found no evidence to support their claim. Indeed, Starfleet intelligence concluded that the scoring on the hull and the damage to the propulsion system were self-inflicted, though the captain and the more than 130 crew and passengers denied it.

Farrir was not a signatory to the Federation Charter and demanded the refugees be returned. When the authorities on Earth tried to arrange transport back to their home world, the Farriri had refused to go, saying that they were members of a persecuted minority.

In the meantime, the media had a field day with stories and anecdotes and speculation—escalating what should have been an easy legal matter into something much more complex, Spock thought.

And now—apparently—the fledgling anti-alien xenophobes calling themselves Earth United have staged a protest, demanding the refugees be sent home immediately without a hearing. Spock is less surprised than resigned.

Leaning forward, Professor Artura pokes his fork into the air like a pointer.

"It shouldn't be that hard to investigate whether the Farriri really are persecuted on their home world," he says. "The Vulcans have a treaty with Farrir. They could demand access to records."

"You are mistaken," Spock says quickly. "Vulcan has an informal trade alliance, not a treaty."

"I meant no offense, Commander," Professor Artura says, and Spock feels a flicker of annoyance at himself for revealing his irritation. "Whether they have a treaty or a trade alliance makes no difference. The Vulcans are respected as fair and impartial. I was suggesting that both the Farriri government and the refugees would cooperate with them."

The professor is right, of course. The Vulcans _do_ have the reputation for being fair and impartial.

And to his surprise, Spock feels another flicker of annoyance.

"You disagree, Commander?"

Clearly he's not himself today, without adequate control, if Professor Artura can read him this well. He struggles to blank his expression before he answers.

"Vulcan…impartiality…may be overstated."

"Truthfully?" Professor Artura picks up a cherry tomato and eyes it carefully before popping it into his mouth. "Then what everyone thinks about Vulcans is wrong?"

His tone is playful and Spock feels his earlier anger ebb away.

"Ascertaining _what everyone thinks about Vulcans_ is impossible," Spock says drily, one eyebrow raised. "However," he adds, "past experience leads me to doubt that the Vulcans would be the best choice to broker an agreement between refugees and a hostile government."

"Past experience?"

"When I was a child," Spock says, "a group of refugees applied for asylum on Vulcan. My father was involved in the negotiations for quite some time. His efforts were fraught with difficulty."

Pushing his plate back and straightening in his chair, Professor Artura says, "But he was successful, I take it?"

Spock tilts his head and lets his gaze drift.

"That," he says, "depends on how you define success. As I recall, my mother was the one who inspired the solution."

X X X X X

There were no playgrounds on Vulcan.

At least not in the Terran sense of the word—areas set aside for children, ornamented with jungle gyms and sliding boards, swings and climbing walls.

Unlike developing humans, young Vulcans needed less unstructured _play_—indeed, their free time was often channeled into music or art or chess lessons. The closest thing they had to rough and tumble play was overseen by martial arts instructors.

However, the many public parks—most with walking and hiking trails—served much the same function as playgrounds, offering not only a place for physical exercise but, to Amanda's way of thinking, the more necessary opportunity for social interaction.

The park nearest the Vulcan embassy building in Shi'Kahr, for instance. Not only did it offer a leafy respite from the midday heat, it was a place where many parents and their young children congregated, the parents ambling around the meandering paths or sitting on the recessed stone benches, the children climbing the rock formations or cooling off in one of two shallow streams.

The first few times that Amanda took Spock there, she sat alone while he fished pebbles from the stream, solemnly holding out his wet palm from time to time to show them to her, identifying quartz or shale with a seriousness that made her smile.

At five he was already cautious around other people—either his natural introversion or a reaction to the not-so-subtle comments they heard from time to time when they were in public.

The more reserved Spock became, the more insistent Amanda was that he interact with others—but those interactions drove him further inward. The irony wasn't lost on his mother but she was at a loss to know what to do.

The public park, then, became her proving ground.

Not until the second week after they became regular visitors did Amanda manage to engage another parent in a casual conversation—a father whose twin boys were playing on the bank of the stream.

"How old are your boys?" she asked, and the Vulcan man—taller and thinner than Sarek, with unusual dark blonde hair—looked her over impassively before answering.

"Four years three months fifteen days."

"I don't think I've seen twins before on Vulcan," Amanda said, stepping closer to the stream and looking down where Spock was standing ankle deep in the water. "Do you have other children as well?"

"Twins occur in less than .06% of births," the man said. "I have no other children."

Amanda waited for him to reciprocate—a question about Spock, perhaps—even an intrusive one about his dual heritage, but the man seemed disinterested. With a sigh she walked back to the stone bench and sat down. Almost immediately a Vulcan woman, her head covered with a dark green scarf, sat beside her, a little girl in traditional leggings and a long tunic standing at her knee.

"Hello there," Amanda said to the girl who looked to be about Spock's age, her blue-black hair pulled back into a long braid, her dark eyes large and luminous. With an uneasy glance, Amanda looked up at the mother, half-expecting to be reprimanded for speaking to her daughter without an invitation. Instead she was taken aback by the woman's friendly stare.

"You must be Ambassador Sarek's wife," she said, and Amanda nodded. "I am T'Lina, and my daughter is T'Ana. My husband is one of the contractors working on the embassy renovations—he mentioned seeing you and your son there recently."

Amanda was flabbergasted—not at the idea that she was recognizable, but that T'Lina had approached her. She smiled and said, "Oh, please—call me Amanda. And this is Spock. Spock! Come here!"

Spock chose that moment to do just the kind of thing that got him crossways with Sarek so often. Rather than coming promptly to her—obedient, respectful—he turned into a statue—unmoving, deaf, looking at her with an uncomprehending, unblinking gaze.

"Spock!"

He moved then, lifting one foot and then the other with an exaggerated deliberateness, until he was out of the stream.

On the opposite side.

With a backward glance, he darted up the bank and disappeared into the brush.

"Spock!"

Amanda's voice was tinged with real anger and a large measure of embarrassment. "I'm…sorry!" she said, looking toward T'Lina. "He's…shy. He's usually more—"

But T'Lina did something then so surprising that Amanda would think of that moment often.

"Go call him back," the Vulcan woman said softly to her daughter, and T'Ana dashed forward, splashing across the little stream and plunging into the shrubbery on the opposite bank.

T'Lina's eyes were smiling, even as her face remained impassive.

In a minute the children returned, T'Ana prattling away in a singsong recitation, Spock's brow furrowed.

"And my father says that the next time there's an electrical storm, I can use his ion scanner to measure the trace elements. My teacher says that when the dust level is high, there are three parts per million of boron and sulfur."

"What is the range of the scanner?" Spock asked, barely looking up at his mother as they came up to the stone bench. "Is it handheld or mounted?"

Before Amanda could scold him, T'Ana continued to talk.

"It is her new obsession," T'Lina said. "A month ago she was collecting insects. Before that she was interested in avian migration patterns. I am uncertain whether I should applaud her wide range of interests or be concerned about her lack of focus."

Before she could stop herself, Amanda burst out laughing. Instead of recoiling from Amanda's outburst, however, T'Lina leaned forward fractionally and blinked slowly, as if sharing a private joke.

Which, of course, she was. Amanda was delighted. She loved Sarek's wit—savored his dry delivery, his restrained wordplay—though she rarely saw evidence of amusement or joking from strangers. Long ago she had stopped looking for it. A loss, she saw now—something she missed more than she realized.

Soon she and T'Lina spent much of their free time together, either at the park or taking the children on other outings. When the weather turned too cool for comfortable outdoor activities, they met at each other's houses, the women taking tea while Spock and T'Ana fashioned a terrarium out of a discarded pot and populated it with sand beetles, or pored over an illustrated book of Norse myths Amanda's sister Cecilia had sent, or once, after Sybok had groused about some calculus homework and had dropped his notebook on the floor before stalking off into the kitchen for a snack, had worked through a particularly thorny problem and presented it to him as a _fait accompli_, Spock holding Sybok's computer notebook before him like someone offering a tray of delicacies.

"I'd be so lonely without her," Amanda said one evening as she and Sarek sat in the front room after dinner. "And Spock. You wouldn't believe how talkative he is around T'Ana. He's like a whole different child."

To anyone else Sarek would have seemed impassive, even indifferent, to her comments, but Amanda saw a telltale shift in his expression and felt a tension through their bond. _Guilt, and sadness. _When he spoke she knew what he would say.

"I regret that you have been lonely," he said, holding out his open palm in invitation. "When the current situation at the embassy is resolved—"

Placing her palm in his, Amanda finished his sentence for him.

"When the current situation is resolved—the situation that is taking all your time from your family at the moment—then another situation will arise, and another, and another…until one day you will come home and find that your sons have grown up and moved away. And all you will have left is a very, very old wife waiting on you."

She said it lightly, as a tease, though they both knew that her words held more truth than either was willing to acknowledge.

Blinking once and tilting his head, Sarek continued as if he hadn't been interrupted.

"When the current situation is resolved," he said, "I will be due some time away from work. We could visit your family on Earth then, if you like. Or we could travel somewhere else if you prefer."

"Or stay home and lock the doors," she said, laughing. Threading her fingers through his, she was suddenly serious.

"The _current situation_ is never going to get resolved if the High Council doesn't hurry up. Have they agreed to meet with the refugees yet?"

Sarek let out a breath—as close to a sigh as he ever came—and shook his head.

"When this whole thing started, I believed the High Council would come to a decision quickly. It is not, after all, a difficult matter to sort through. Either the refugees are legally Vulcan and have all the rights and responsibilities of any other citizens, or they aren't."

The current situation consuming so much of Sarek's time concerned a small group of inhabitants of a remote Vulcan mining colony. Settled more than three centuries earlier, the colony had long ago stopped its mining production, the karnite supply tapped out sooner than anyone had anticipated.

Instead of closing the colony and returning to Vulcan, those long ago settlers had turned to subsistence farming and trade with passing freighters to sustain themselves. Over time, they were joined by settlers from other planets—an entire clan of Andorians fleeing a blood feud, a group of Orcian craftsmen looking for land, an entire population of a tiny planet destroyed when their star when nova.

For all intents and purposes the colonists were forgotten by Vulcan, or at least ignored.

Until the colony was almost destroyed by Xaxian marauders—a warlike people who swooped out of the skies one day, destroying much of the colony's infrastructure without explaining any design or purpose to the attacks. Fewer than a thousand settlers managed to escape, most in small sloops that took weeks to make the journey back to Vulcan.

Their reception was less than welcoming. Three centuries ago a few intrepid Vulcan miners had left. Now a hodgepodge group of mixed race people—only a few with Vulcan physical traits—returned, wanting asylum.

The High Council was stymied. The refugees claimed to be Vulcan. They had, after all, lived on a Vulcan colony, one officially chartered and sanctioned by the government. Some were descended from the original settlers. Most claimed to follow Vulcan principles and practices, such as a devotion to logic and a control of emotions.

But after that the similarities broke down. Their history, their culture, their habits were foreign and baffling to the native Vulcans. If they didn't openly shun the refugees, they didn't accept them, either.

People began to debate the merits of allowing them to stay. Better to help them resettle somewhere else, some Vulcans argued, while a minority called for a renewed commitment to _infinite diversity in infinite combinations_—the cornerstone of Vulcan philosophy.

For many reasons Amanda followed the debates carefully. She became convinced that if the refugees were not allowed to stay—if they were, in effect, judged to be less than full citizens—that her own life, and Spock's, were diminished somehow, that this adopted home world was also rejecting her and her son.

"A fanciful notion," Sarek had told her, but she couldn't shake her foreboding.

"It's not fanciful," she argued. "The question of the refugees goes to the heart of things. What makes someone a Vulcan? Genes? Beliefs? A choice to be a Vulcan? That's a question your own son struggles with every day. Don't you dare dismiss it as a fanciful notion."

Through their bond she felt Sarek stiffen. She pressed her point home.

"That's right," she said. "The refugees have decided that they are Vulcan—by whatever measure they use. Who is the High Council to contradict them?"

Her friendship with T'Lina was an anchor while Sarek was preoccupied with the refugee negotiations. In the long afternoons while Spock and T'Ana explored the back yard or sat quietly side-by-side drawing or reading, the two women talked about the controversy the refugees had unwillingly provoked in Vulcan society.

"I met some of the colonists at the market yesterday," T'Lina said as she helped Amanda weed the vegetable garden in the morning shade. "A family group. The father looked to have some Andorian traits, but the children appeared to be more like their mother. They asked for directions to a healer. One of the children had eaten something that disagreed with her, I believe."

"Did you have any trouble understanding them?" Amanda asked, her attention focused on picking out the weeds from the delicate _plomeek_ shoots. "One of the news vids said that their language was almost unrecognizable."

T'Lina straightened up. "The refugees who spoke to me had a definite accent, but I had no trouble discerning their meaning."

"Then the news vid lied," Amanda said, standing up and leading the way out of the garden to the veranda steps.

"A possibility," T'Lina said. "Though it is also possible that the refugees I met were not typical of the group. Their language skills may be superior—"

"The news vid lied," Amanda repeated. "What are the odds that you just happened to meet the only refugees who speak passable Vulcan?"

"Low," T'Lina said, provoking a mirthless laugh from Amanda.

"Not only that," Amanda said, passing through the kitchen to the sitting room beyond, "the whole issue of language is just another way to paint the refugees as unworthy to be Vulcans. What does it matter if they speak with an accent, or if they speak Vulcan at all? Language doesn't define who we are."

T'Lina settled herself in an overstuffed chair, an indulgence not usually seen in Vulcan homes with their traditional ascetic furniture of straight-backed chairs and functional tables. In one corner Spock and T'Ana were silently constructing a model of some sort from twigs and scraps of paper.

With a sigh, Amanda sat down on the sofa and said, "I don't mean to suggest that language isn't an important part of our culture. It is. Some researchers argue that it shapes how we think—what we can think about."

From the corner of her eye Amanda saw Spock turn and look at her over his shoulder. She felt his curiosity, not just through his obvious attention but through their bond.

"Mother," T'Ana said, "if a human spoke Vulcan all the time, would she be a Vulcan?"

Because Amanda was looking in her direction, she saw what she would have missed otherwise—an unmistakable signal passing between the children, some communication sent with a glance, with a half-sketched gesture.

And suddenly she knew. T'Ana was speaking aloud a question Spock wanted posed but didn't want credit for asking.

Flicking her eyes back to T'Lina, she saw understanding there. _So._ Both mothers recognized how close the children were, how allied with each other they had become.

"Why do you ask?" T'Lina said, and T'Ana swept her dark, luminous gaze over Spock. Another signal—a nonverbal asking and answering—flickered between them.

"We were wondering," T'Ana said, "if the Lady Amanda thinks as Vulcans do, or does she think like humans?"

"You would need to ask her."

Through her bond Amanda felt Spock squirm.

"I think like a human," Amanda said, "but I believe that I understand how Vulcans think. And yes, it probably helps that I speak Vulcan—and that I live with Vulcans, and that I have a son who is a Vulcan."

She paused and gave a meaningful look in Spock's direction.

"If I learned to speak Standard," T'Ana said, standing up and brushing off the knees of her leggings, "would I understand humans better?"

"Perhaps," Amanda said as the little girl walked to her mother's side and leaned into the arm of the chair. "It couldn't hurt. Did you have any particular humans in mind?"

She arched her eyebrows in mock seriousness and grinned, expecting to hear herself named.

Instead, T'Ana looked back to the corner.

"Spock," she said, and Amanda blinked in surprise.

An awkward silence—until T'Lina said, "You two seem to understand each other very well already."

For the rest of the afternoon, Amanda watched T'Ana and Spock closely and, she hoped, unobtrusively. Sure enough, she noticed how often they started and finished each other's sentences, how one or the other would point or motion and the other would immediately understand what was being asked.

Later that night as she recounted the story for Sarek, he nodded and said, "They do seem unusually compatible." Immediately Amanda recognized the significance of his words. Already Sarek had started making inquiries about suitable bondmates for Spock—a concession Amanda had agreed to reluctantly, and only because she had been convinced it was for Spock's well-being to be bonded in a traditional _kal'telan_. Most Vulcan males didn't experience _pon farr_ until their third or fourth decades, but early onset—even in adolescence—wasn't unheard of. Spock's dual heritage gave him a genetic wild card—or so his parents worried.

And even if _pon farr_ wasn't an issue, Amanda knew how important her own telepathic bond was with Sarek—how reassuring, how comforting. That Spock would want—would, in fact, need—the same sort of steadying presence of a sympathetic mind made sense to her.

She could imagine the young woman T'Ana would grow to be—bright, affectionate, spirited in a pleasant way. When Sarek had time—_if_ Sarek had time—they would have to broach the idea with T'Lina and her husband.

For a few weeks Amanda was hopeful that the refugee situation was close to a resolution. A prominent ethicist published a paper arguing that the biological origins of the colonists were irrelevant to the discussion of their citizenship. Because the colony had never broken ties with Vulcan, its inhabitants were technically still Vulcan, regardless of where their ancestors had come from.

Then a committee of High Council commissioners staged a public forum to discuss the cultural attributes that defined what it was to be Vulcan. Although some on the panel argued that language and philosophy were critical, others were less sure, leaving any conclusions ambiguous, the fate of the refugees still undecided.

"Sarek's going to appear before a preliminary hearing tomorrow," Amanda said one day in T'Lina's kitchen as they worked on a complicated recipe for stew using a rare vegetable that was in season only a few days a year. From down the hall Amanda could hear the soft murmur of the children as they chatted. "Stovell told him that the mood of the High Council is starting to shift. There's more of a call to help the colonists resettle off planet somewhere."

"Is that what the refugees want?" T'Lina asked as she expertly stripped yellowed leaves from what looked like tough, withered stalks of bamboo.

"No!" Amanda said sharply. She darted a look of apology at T'Lina and added, "The last thing they want is to be moved again. Most of them have found housing, jobs. Their children are in school. When Sarek met with their representative, he said all they want at this point is to be left alone."

"Understandable," T'Lina said agreeably. "Then I hope that the Council listens when Sarek speaks to them."

"I wish more people felt like you do," Amanda said, picking up a handful of chopped stalks and dropping them into a pot of boiling water. "Even Sarek has reservations. We've had more than one argument about it. I had to twist his arm to get him to see how the refugees might feel."

Wiping her hands on her apron, she noticed the same hint of amusement at the corner of T'Lina's eye that had first made her think they could be friends. Another Vulcan might have been shocked at Amanda's confession of arguing with her spouse—might have found her behavior incomprehensible. T'Lina's acceptance—her lack of judgment—was an oasis in an otherwise bleak landscape of relationships.

With a sudden intake of breath, Amanda turned to her and said, "You know, the refugees don't want anything we don't want. A way to make a living, a place where they feel safe. A future for their children. I don't understand why they shouldn't have that chance."

"Nor I," T'Lina said, setting the pot on the cook top. Picking up a kettle, she walked to the large table in the center of the kitchen and refilled two empty cups with tea. Amanda sank into a chair gratefully and took a sip.

A sudden thump, a scrape of furniture across the floor, from down the hall.

_I am unharmed_, she felt Spock say, and she and T'Lina made eye contact at the same time. Another hint of humor in T'Lina's face. Amanda smiled broadly for them both.

"At least they are having a good time," Amanda said.

"They always seem to enjoy each other's company."

Amanda took another sip of her tea and considered what to say next.

"Have you," she said slowly, "already made arrangements for T'Ana's future?"

"Clarify."

"A bondmate. Have you and Senek chosen someone for her? She's almost six, isn't she? Forgive me for being nosey—it's just, well, I thought you might have started to give some thought to it."

"Senek has several contacts," T'Lina said, her forefinger looped through the handle of her tea cup. "But we have a year before we have to decide."

"Yes," Amanda agreed. "Sarek and I have started to talk, too. It's…daunting…to make that sort of decision for your child. At least, it feels that way to me."

"Indeed," T'Lina said. "I was not aware that you wished to have Spock bonded."

"It seems…logical," Amanda said with a little laugh. "After all, he is a Vulcan."

"A pity he is also human," T'Lina said. "That limits your options considerably."

Amanda's mouth was instantly dry, the taste of tea bitter on her tongue.

"What do you mean?" she managed to say at last, and T'Lina said, "There are so few humans on Vulcan. Or perhaps you plan to look for a bondmate on Earth?"

Like watching a house of cards tumble down, Amanda felt her stomach drop.

For a moment she sat completely still, her face flushed, her eyes hot. She didn't dare blink.

"Actually," she finally said, "we are hoping to bond him with another Vulcan."

An unmistakable look of surprise crossed T'Lina's features. _Ah._ A separation had been there all along. Amanda felt her heart give another lurch.

"You disapprove of cross species relations," she said simply, a statement of fact. Even as she said it, she hoped T'Lina would protest otherwise, that she would somehow explain what she had meant earlier, that her comment could be seen in a different, more innocuous, light.

"Certainly not," T'Lina said. "In many cases—such as the refugees, or when Vulcans are stationed far from home, as when Sarek was on Earth—they are necessary."

Amanda steadied her hand on the table and took a breath. T'Lina continued.

"Naturally, such unions are not optimal. Surely you agree."

To Amanda's embarrassment, her vision blurred and her hand shook slightly.

"Thank you for the tea," she said at last, standing up slowly. "Spock, come here. We have to go."

"The stew?" T'Lina said, gesturing toward the bubbling pot. "You need to take your portion home with you."

Turning on her heel, Amanda said over her shoulder, "I seem to have lost my appetite."

When she set the flitter down beside their house half an hour later, Sarek was waiting at the front door. If Spock was surprised to find his father home early, he didn't show it. For once he was instantly obedient, heading to his bedroom when his parents moved to Sarek's private study.

As soon as Sarek shut the door behind them, Amanda sagged into his arms.

"Thank you for being here," she said, and Sarek pressed the top of her head with his chin and closed his grip around her.

"I came as soon as I knew you were in distress," he said, and slowly Amanda recalled the conversation with T'Lina for him, dimly aware that her wash of fury was causing him pain. When she fell silent again, she stepped back and let her hands slide to his.

"All this time," she said, "I thought she was…different. Not prejudiced like so many others, but really fair and impartial. I feel so foolish, Sarek. And betrayed."

She felt him sifting through a reply, felt him hesitate.

"What?" she prompted, looking him in the eye.

"She isn't wrong," Sarek said.

Amanda felt her shoulders tighten. She let go of Sarek's hands and crossed her arms.

"About what?"

"That cross species bondings are not optimal. That Spock's options are constrained."

"I can't believe you are saying this. Tell me you aren't being serious."

"Amanda, I am merely being logical. You are letting your emotions cloud your judgment."

"My judgment! You're the one saying we don't belong together—"

"I said no such thing."

"You said cross species bondings weren't optimal!"

"By optimal I meant the easiest for achieving satisfaction or harmony."

"Then you're right," Amanda said, uncrossing her arms and glaring. "We _aren't_ very satisfied or harmonious!"

"Amanda—"

"And what about Spock? Because he's both human and Vulcan, he has no optimal choices?"

"Amanda—"

"And all those refugees? Descended from less than optimal bond pairs? That's why they aren't truly Vulcan? Why the High Council would rather they moved on, out of sight, so no one's racism is called into question?"

"If you let me—"

"I have a meal to prepare," Amanda said gruffly, yanking open the door of the study. "I know you Vulcans can go for days without food, but my human son and I have to eat!"

With a flourish, she stormed down the hall to the kitchen. In a few minutes, Amanda heard the front door open and shut and Sarek's hoverbike start up, undoubtedly taking him back to town to his office.

Good. She didn't want to try to talk to him any more right now.

"Mother?"

She looked toward the kitchen door and saw Spock standing there, his chin tilted down, his eyes in shadow.

"Everything's okay," she said to answer his unspoken question. "Come help me wash this _barkaya_ for soup."

They prepared their meal and ate in near silence, Amanda starting each time she thought she heard Sarek's hoverbike in the distance. She went to bed late and slept uneasily.

When he still wasn't home the next morning, she was as much alarmed as angry. Spock drifted into breakfast with circles under his eyes, scuffing his feet on the flagstone floor like a man going to his own execution. With a pang Amanda knew that part of what he was suffering was her own confusion, and she redoubled her efforts to tamp down the emotional current she was broadcasting through their bond.

After breakfast she sat alone on the veranda as the sun came up and tried to get a sense of Sarek in her mind. He was so distant that she might as well have been shouting into an empty canyon. Reluctantly she gave in to the expediency of calling his office, only to be told by his secretary that he was unavailable. By midmorning when he hadn't returned the messages she left on his personal comm, she decided to act.

"Hop in," she said to Spock as she unlocked the flitter doors and slid into the pilot's seat.

"Father," Spock said, and Amanda nodded.

"Yes," she said. "We're going to find your father."

The ride to town was short and uneventful, though Amanda wouldn't have noticed otherwise, so preoccupied with the piece of her mind she intended to give Sarek when she saw him.

How dare he stay away without letting her know his plans, worrying her, and worse, worrying Spock? Yes, she hadn't wanted to speak to him last night, but that didn't mean she never wanted to speak to him. He knew her better than that.

His secretary barely glanced up when she and Spock stood in front of her desk.

"The Ambassador is unavailable," the elderly Vulcan woman said. She was stooped and thin, her graying hair pulled into a severe bun that she pinned at the base of her neck.

"So you said," Amanda said, not bothering to hide the impatience in her voice. "But this is an emergency. A _family_ emergency. I need to speak to him."

At that the secretary did look up, and squinting briefly, said, "He's in the meeting hall in the main building."

The meeting hall door was open as Amanda and Spock, trailing slightly behind her, approached. Even as she stood in the hall, Amanda recognized Sarek's voice.

_The preliminary hearing before the High Council._ How had she forgotten that it was today? She started to back up and felt Spock behind her.

"Why is Father speaking?"

Spock spoke softly but the attendant at the door looked in their direction. With a wave of his hand, he motioned them forward.

"The visitors' galley is to the left," he said, and before Amanda could say a word, Spock darted forward through the door. With an apologetic shrug, she followed him to the cordoned off section of chairs and sat down.

Only a few visitors were there. By contrast, the table for the High Councilors was full, as were the rows of seats to the left and right reserved for the embassy workers and the people scheduled to testify—refugees, from the look of them.

Amanda felt Sarek's eyes on her before she glanced up. He was still removed, difficult to feel. She lifted her chin and settled back and hoped she looked more composed than she felt.

"The colonists," Sarek was saying, "have made their wishes clear. Remaining on Vulcan is, in their estimation, the most logical course of action. Most have resumed their lives and have no desire to relocate yet again."

From where she was sitting, Amanda couldn't see who spoke next, but she could hear him clearly.

"If a suitable place were found, they might prefer that."

"They have found a suitable place," Sarek said. "Here."

From the corner of her eye, Amanda saw Spock arch his back and push with his toes against the floor in an effort to see over the people sitting in front of him.

"But their presence is a disruption," the voice said, and Amanda heard a murmur rustle through the group of refugees. "My constituents complain that the foreigners are hostile to traditional Vulcan values, that they want to change our way of life."

"Hearsay," Sarek said over another outbreak of murmurs. "The refugees follow many of Surak's precepts, including the value of infinite diversity in infinite combinations."

"Surak also said that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few," a dark-haired Vulcan woman sitting at the High Council table said. "The social structure of the many is under attack by these foreigners. We have a right to defend our traditions and customs."

Across the room Amanda saw Sarek look at her squarely. The bond between them flickered into life and she breathed a sigh of relief.

"Surak was not advocating the tyranny of the majority," Sarek said, but the Vulcan woman said swiftly, "That is _your_ interpretation."

"Nor have you addressed the underlying legal issue," he said. "These refugees are not foreigners but are Vulcans."

"One has only to look closely to see that they are not," the woman said.

"Then you reject as Vulcans those persons whose genetic makeup is more complex than your own?"

Amanda slid forward in her chair, her heart thumping.

"It is not only their appearance but their habits, their beliefs."

"So you are saying that all Vulcans must behave in the same manner, believe the same things?"

"Key things, yes."

"Then how," Sarek said, "do you explain the demarcation between what you believe about these refugees and what I believe? You and I are both Vulcans, yet we differ greatly."

This time the crowd was noisier than a murmur. As if she sensed the argument about to get away from her, the woman turned to the other High Councilors and said, "The ambassador is being disingenuous."

"But you do agree that we are both Vulcans?"

"Your point, Ambassador?"

"You agree?"

"If it helps you to move forward in this discussion, then yes."

"And my son? Is he a Vulcan?"

"I do not know your son."

"Spock."

Amanda looked down to where Spock was perched on his chair. Slipping forward, he stepped around the cordon and walked down the aisle toward the High Council's table, stopping a few feet in front of the woman who had addressed Sarek. With an involuntary gasp, Amanda drew her hand over her mouth.

"Is he? A Vulcan?"

The Vulcan woman said nothing.

"Ambassador," one of the other High Councilors said, "what is your point?"

"My son," Sarek said, "is a Vulcan. My family has lived here for generations. My father served in the Council for over a century, as did his father before him. Spock carries their genes; Vulcan is his birthright."

"How does that apply to the matter at hand? Most of these foreigners are only marginally related to some distant Vulcan ancestor. They are as much Andorian or Orcian."

"And my son," Sarek said, motioning for Spock to join him where he stood to the side, "is half human. My wife—"

Amanda willed her knees not to shake as she stood and walked forward. She knew many of the Councilors, had visited their homes and recognized their spouses, had met their children. As she passed them, she tried to catch their eyes, and when she did, she gave a brief nod.

_Don't pretend you don't know me_, she thought.

"My wife is a human," Sarek said, "as you can see. But she is also a Vulcan by choice. She has lived here for many years—has worked in the education ministry—is raising a son as a Vulcan. In what way—in what _key_ way," he said, looking directly at the woman Councilor, "is she not due the respect, the rights, we accord each other?"

At that the crowd erupted into noise louder than before. The chief Councilor raised his hands and asked for quiet.

In that moment Amanda felt Sarek rush back into her thoughts—the way a wave rushes toward the shore, as if its return was always expected.

"Let's go," she said softly in Spock's ear. "I told you—everything's okay."

And it was. Two days later the High Council released a statement that the refugees were free to stay on Vulcan as full citizens if they desired. As far as Amanda knew, none took up the offer to relocate elsewhere.

X X X X X

"I see what you mean," Professor Artura says. "Though in the end, the High Council made the right call. They were fair and impartial when it mattered."

"Indeed," Spock says, "though I would argue that the odds are high they would not have done so if my mother hadn't been at the hearing."

"An interesting notion," the Andorian says, nodding. "Your mother—the real ambassador."

As Spock lifts his mug to finish the last of his tea, he feels a disturbance in the air behind his back. A whiff of something light and floral, a prickle of electricity leaping through the atmosphere. His body knows the truth before his mind has time to catch up.

"Professor!"

Cadet Uhura's voice, obviously pleased about something. From across the table, Professor Artura wiggles his antenna and his face splits into a wide grin.

"Cadet, please join us," he says, and Spock feels the temperature change as she sets her tray on the table beside him and pulls out a chair.

"Do you mind, Commander?" she asks.

"Of course he doesn't," Professor Artura says. "Don't be fooled by his Vulcan demeanor. He's positively blushing."

If he wasn't flushed before, the Professor's words bring heat to his face—and a flash of annoyance. Careful not to look at the cadet, he hears her swallow and let out what sounds like an exasperated sigh.

Spock's flashes of insight into human behavior are few and far between—but with a sudden certainty, he knows she is irritated with Professor Artura on his behalf. He risks a glance in her direction.

"I didn't mean to interrupt your lunch," she tells him, "but I saw the news vid last night. I'm sorry about what happened."

"The Commander was just telling me about a similar situation when he was a child," Professor Artura says, pushing away from the table and standing up carefully. "Perhaps he will tell you the story. It is quite enlightening."

A feeling close to panic ripples through Spock as he watches the Andorian pick up his tray. Spock puts his hands on both sides of his tray and starts to rise as well.

"Oh, no," Professor Artura says. "You haven't finished your lunch, and you need to eat. Cadet Uhura, make sure the Commander gets what he needs."

The professor's _double entendre_ is unmistakable. He grins and shuffles away.

"I'm sorry, sir."

For the first time since she sat down, Spock looks directly at the cadet. She's frowning slightly, her hands resting on the table in front of her.

"He likes to tease," she adds, picking up her spoon. "He doesn't mean anything by it. It's how he always teased his daughter..."

She tugs off the foil top of a yogurt carton and dips her spoon.

"...before she died," she says. Spock watches the journey of her spoon to her mouth.

Pulling himself up short, he says, "Professor Artura's daughter?"

"Oh, yes," Cadet Uhura says. "She and his wife were both killed in some kind of feud. I think that's why he doesn't live on Andoria anymore. You probably know more about it than I do."

She takes another bite of yogurt and Spock feels an odd sensation near his sternum as the spoon touches her bottom lip.

"I was…unaware…that the Professor had a daughter," he says, willing himself to look down at his half-eaten salad.

That Cadet Uhura knows so much personal information about Professor Artura is astonishing. Spock has taught in the same department for two years now—has shared numerous tea breaks, has sat beside the Andorian in faculty meetings—without learning the kinds of details the cadet knows.

"He says I remind him of her," she says, and Spock looks back up. He tries—unsuccessfully—to imagine what the resemblance might be.

"I know," she says, laughing. "I can't picture it either."

He actually shivers then—not noticeably, to be sure, but enough to alarm him_. It's as if she can sense his thoughts—_

"Commander," she says suddenly, leaning toward him, "I hope you don't think I'm out of line asking this, but—"

Someone at the next table drops a tray and the sound of shattered glass makes him jump.

"—I was wondering if you would recommend me for a summer internship."

_How did she know?_ He hasn't yet heard about the funding, but he's reasonably certain that the Federation will approve his summer project. He has asked for enough money to support two interns to translate and record first time applications for Federation membership.

Off-worlders new to the Federation often have trouble navigating the lengthy application process. In addition, non-Standard speakers need extra support from translation services—services his advanced language students can provide.

The funding doesn't have to be much. Enough to pay the expenses of two interns, sufficient office space, a salary for his oversight. He had hoped to get confirmation before the end of the semester when he could approach his best students with the offer.

And now somehow Cadet Uhura knows about the job.

The contradiction of excitement and despair at the image of working side-by-side with her all summer catches him off guard.

"My last exam isn't until next Wednesday," she says, "but after that I'm going home unless something comes up."

He opens his mouth to explain that the translation job is hers if she wants it—and even as he does, he feels his heart lift with the idea.

"But if you would recommend me," she says, "Dr. Ellington says he can make a position for me at the Mars sensor lab."

With a clink, he sets his fork on his plate.

"The Mars sensor lab?"

"Uh huh. Helping calibrate the new telemetry equipment. Not the most exciting way to spend a summer, but it might be useful."

"I see."

He is nailed to his chair, his arms and legs so heavy that he doesn't move.

A summer on Mars. Naturally she is correct. Learning to calibrate the telemetry equipment would be a better use of her time than working on simple translations. Would make her more competitive when she graduates and applies for a position on a starship.

"Of course," he says. "I will be happy to recommend you."

"Thank you," she says, finishing the last bite of her yogurt. She motions to his plate, still piled with salad. "Tell me that story Professor Artura mentioned while you eat."

She's smiling—happy with the promise of a summer away on Mars.

The next two months stretch before him like a desert.

"Another time, perhaps," he says, knowing there won't be one. As he gets up and picks up his tray, he sees her expression as he turns to go—surprise at his departure? Relief?

He walks out of the cafeteria without looking back, a refugee without a moor, at sea.

**A/N: Please forgive the tardy update and the lengthy chapter. I took time out to write "Ceremony" for the LJ Holiday Fic Exchange, and other RL challenges have interrupted my schedule. Now I'm back on track. I hope I haven't lost you! Please let me know if you are still out there reading!  
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	5. Advice

**Chapter Five: Advice**

**Disclaimer: This is my playground, not where I work and make money.**

Admiral McEwan is not amused.

Even Spock can see that at once.

Standing with his hands behind his back, he waits at the door of her office for her to acknowledge him. Instead, she continues scanning the PADD in her hand without looking up. As he waits, Spock notes that her short gray hair needs a trim, that her posture is stiffer than usual.

Across the desk sits Commander Jeffers, a colleague from the computer department. An older man as tall and thin as Spock, Jeffers is on temporary assignment at the Academy after serving two tours on a remote research outpost.

Spock doesn't know Jeffers well—has, in fact, spoken to him rarely—the last time to tell him that he wasn't interested in collaborating on a proposal for a cybernetic hardware update for the active ships of the line. The Commander had seemed to accept his refusal, but his presence in the Admiral's office at the same time that Spock has been ordered to report suggests otherwise.

Finally the Admiral sets the PADD on her desk and directs her attention to Spock. With a wave of her hand, she motions him to the other chair in front of her desk.

"Do you know why I've called you here?" she asks, and Spock says, "Presumably to order me to aid the Commander in the upgrade."

The Admiral frowns—though whether because she is surprised that he has ascertained why he is being summoned or because she is upset for some reason, he doesn't know.

"No one's going to _order_ you," she says, pursing her lips. "But I want an explanation as to why you refused to help."

"I thought the project ill advised," Spock says swiftly. To his right, Commander Jeffers shifts in his chair.

"You do know that the cybernetic hardware is overdue for an update," Jeffers says, and Spock turns to face him.

"Although it is scheduled in the maintenance rotation," Spock says, "no one using the hardware has requested an upgrade. In fact, the efficiency ranking for the current system is 95.44%. The long-range sensors, on the other hand, are consistently cited as needing improvement."

"Long-range sensors were upgraded six months ago," Admiral McEwan says. "The cybernetic hardware is two years old."

"Six months ago refined iridium was not available for use in sensor arrays. The new treaty with the Trastian Syndicate means that a reliable source of iridium is now possible. Replacing the duranium currently used with refined iridium would increase the range of the arrays by 27%. Starfleet would be better served by investing in the long-range sensor upgrade instead of the cybernetic hardware."

The Admiral taps one finger on her desk.

"When you turned down Commander Jeffers' request to work with him on the cybernetic hardware, did you offer this explanation?"

"He did not request one."

"Did you tell anyone that you think the long range sensor array should be refitted instead of upgrading the cybernetic hardware?"

"There was no need. The refit is logical. Those charged with the maintenance rotation must be aware of the availability of the more highly refined iridium."

The Admiral makes eye contact with Commander Jeffers and sends him some nonverbal message that Spock assumes is a reprimand, most likely for wasting her time.

"That's all, Commander Jeffers," she says abruptly, and Spock starts to rise as well. "Not you, Commander Spock."

As soon as Jeffers closes the door behind him, Admiral McEwan slams her hand flat on the desk.

"Dammit, Spock!" she says. His eyebrows fly into his bangs, giving away his surprise. "When a colleague asks for your help, would it hurt you to give it?"

He recognizes that this is a rhetorical question—something humans ask as a way of making a point rather than seeking genuine information. Folding his hands on his lap, he waits for the Admiral to continue.

"This isn't the first time I've had to field a complaint about your intransigence—"

At this Spock's eyebrows fly up again. With an effort, he blanks his expression.

"—but it will be the last. Starfleet isn't an organization of individuals all going their own way. You know that. I shouldn't have to waste my time telling you that. Without teamwork we all fail. Do I make myself clear?"

The Admiral, in fact, has confused him. Is she telling him that he is to help Commander Jeffers after all? Surely not. He had clarified his objections to the Commander's project. She must be speaking abstractly, directing him to increase the percentage of his time that he spends collaborating with colleagues in the future.

"Sometimes you have to _go along_ to _get along_," his mother told him more than once, usually when he objected to something his father wanted him to do. "You don't have to get your way all the time."

But it wasn't about getting his way. It was about doing what was logical. If his father told him to water the garden at noon, waiting until evening when the evaporation rate was less made more sense.

"Just go along," his mother would repeat, and invariably he did, reluctantly, feeling like a fraud.

Still, the harmony in the house was maintained, and that, he supposed, was the real reason for his mother's advice.

And perhaps for the Admiral's words now. He tilts his head and says, "I understand."

When he gets back to the language building and heads down the hall to his office, he hears the voice of his new aide, J. C. Ellison, coming from the break room.

"Hello, Commander," J. C. says with an unnecessary wave of his hand. Across the table with her back to him is Cadet Uhura, her long ponytail swinging to the side as she looks over her shoulder at him and smiles. To his dismay, he feels heat wash over him like a wave.

He hasn't seen her since the new semester began two weeks ago—not even a glimpse as he walked across the commons or made his way from the language to the computer science buildings. That she's here now—with Cadet Ellison—is both unexpected and disturbing.

"Cadet Ellison," Spock says. "Cadet Uhura. I trust your summer internship was successful."

"The word you mean," she says, "is _stressful_."

"Shoulda stayed here and done translations with me," J. C. says. "Commander Spock's easier to work for than Dr. Ellison. I warned you about that."

Cadet Uhura's expression is unreadable. "I didn't know there was a job available here," she says, darting a look in Spock's direction.

She leans forward again and the sight of her ponytail sweeping her shoulders causes him intense discomfort. As he watches, she places the fingers of her right hand on J. C.'s wrist, an action so intimate that Spock has to look away.

"Did you ask?" she says, and J. C. shakes his head. Spock hears her give a sigh, loud and exaggerated, that he realizes is for dramatic effect. A joke of some sort? Some private communication with Cadet Ellison?

"Commander," she says, turning her gaze on him, "J. C. was supposed to ask you already, but I wanted to see if you have any time this semester when I could come in for a Vulcan language tutorial. I met a Vulcan researcher on the Mars station who said I needed some help with my fricatives."

His reaction is immediate.

"Whoever told you that was misinformed. Your pronunciation is sufficient."

He intends it as a statement of fact—and partly as a compliment—but she knits her brows together and tips her chin down, as if he had scolded her or told her something unpleasant.

"That's why I didn't ask," Cadet Ellison says, leaning near her ear as he stands up. "Excuse me, Commander. I have to open the lab now."

Waiting a beat, Spock stands beside the table, expecting Cadet Uhura to leave as well. Instead, she lifts one hand and says, "Commander?" and he realizes with a start that she is inviting him to sit.

"You have a question?" he parries, and she says, "I need some advice. About a problem I'm having with an instructor."

Not alarm but something akin to it stops him from his planned exit.

"I am hardly in a position to give advice," he says, an image of Admiral McEwan flashing through his mind. "Human relationships are beyond my expertise. You would do better to ask your faculty advisor."

He turns to go but her voice calls him back.

"Yes," she says, "I understand. I did consult her, but she wasn't very helpful. I won't take more than a moment of your time, really."

It's a question—no, it's more than that, a supplication. Taking a slow breath, he pulls out the chair abandoned by Cadet Ellison and perches on its edge.

"It's just," she continues in a rush, as if to keep him from fleeing, "you know me. You know how committed I am to securing a posting on the _Enterprise_ when I graduate."

"You have mentioned it repeatedly," he says, and she flashes him an odd look. Should he have been more precise? She's spoken to him—and to her classmates within his hearing—of her ambitions about the _Enterprise_ on at least nine different occasions.

"Well, yes," she says, stumbling slightly over her words. "Anyway, my instructor knows that, too, but when I've asked for advanced work or extra assignments, he hasn't been cooperative."

That seems unusual. In Spock's experience, most professors are more than willing to augment their curriculum for interested students.

"Perhaps his schedule precludes offering you additional time," he says, settling back a fraction in the chair. He watches an expression flicker across Cadet Uhura's face.

"That could be right," she says, nodding slowly. "Whenever I talk to him, he seems preoccupied."

"You could ask your faculty advisor to approach him," Spock says, but she shakes her head.

"No," she says, "I can't expect anyone else to run interference for me. I've tried doing things his way—you know, when he turns me down, just accepting what he decides. I need to figure out how to convince him to take me seriously."

Spock isn't sure what to say. He has trouble imagining someone not taking the cadet seriously, not recognizing her obvious gifts and helping her toward her goal of the _Enterprise_. He feels a pang of anger on her behalf.

Clearly he is unable to assist her. He starts to say so but something holds him back.

With an almost imperceptible wince, she says, "I'm sorry, Commander. I didn't mean to take up your time. I'll figure it out—eventually."

She smiles then, and that—the parting of her lips, the brief flash of her teeth—propels his next words without a conscious decision.

"My mother," he says, "often cautioned me to accommodate others, to _go along_ when necessary."

Glancing at her, he sees that she is looking at him closely and he swallows before continuing.

"However," he adds, "she also had another saying she liked to quote: to thine own self be true."

"Shakespeare," the cadet says, and he nods and says, "_Hamlet_."

"You're telling me to let the instructor know in no uncertain terms what I want. Not to accept no for an answer."

"I am indeed."

"And you think that might work."

It's a declaration more than a question—he hears her certainty.

"It did for my mother," he says, and then for the second time in less than a minute, he shocks himself by uttering something he hadn't planned to say. "If you have a few moments, you might find her story instructive."

X X X X X X

_I see what you mean._

From across the crowded reception room, Amanda saw Sarek react to her observation, the slightest hitch in his step as he walked slowly beside the Trastian _alcor, _who like so many species in this quadrant, was upright and bipedal, with sense organs equating eyes and ears. At least thirty centimeters shorter than Sarek and far more compact, the _alcor_—the hereditary leader of the rather reclusive people known for their mining facilities and metalworking skills—was speaking non-stop, alternatively punching his fists in the air and waving his arms broadly.

Sarek's mild distress at the unpredictable noise and motion radiated through their bond. When the _alcor_ paused for a moment, Sarek met Amanda's eye and she hurried across the room.

"My wife, Amanda," he said, lifting his hand toward her. Raising her eyebrows at his uncharacteristic invitation, Amanda brushed his palm with her fingertips briefly before letting her hands fall to her side.

_You must be unsettled, indeed, to need a public touch._

"You belong to the Ambassador?" the _alcor_ said. This close Amanda could see why so many people found him unnerving. His gaze was too intense, his eyes as light and transparent as water.

"We belong to each other," she replied, tamping down a prickle of annoyance—either hers or Sarek's.

The _alcor_ made a dismissive motion with his hand.

"A matter of semantics," he said. "It doesn't change the reality. I know, I know. I've been informed that Vulcans do not recognize the same hierarchies that the Trastians do. Nevertheless, one of you is the Ambassador—"

With a flick of his finger, the _alcor_ pointed to Sarek.

"—and one of you…is not."

A reply was on the tip of Amanda's tongue when she felt Sarek caution her.

"Your son," Sarek said, looking in the direction of a Trastian boy standing near a table of edible fruits. "Does he usually travel with you?"

It was an obvious redirection of the conversation and Amanda felt irritated, as if she had been scolded.

"Another curious matter of semantics," the _alcor_ said. "We do not call them our sons. On Trastia we call them our _manifestations_. Or some prefer the term_ replacements_."

"Not clones?" Amanda interjected before she could stop herself. "I understood that they are your genetic duplicates, that each Trastian has his own—"

To her surprise, the _alcor_ rounded on her and raised his voice.

"They are not clones," he said, his eyes narrowed, his breathing heavy. "That term implies that they are artificially engineered, but our manifestations are naturally engendered. Our reproductive habits are as valid as yours."

"I meant no offense—"

"We know how the Federation judges us," the_ alcor_ said. "They call us slaves to our genes, people without choice. But our society is stable, our future secure, because we know what our offspring will be like. We have no worries about producing unacceptable _sons_—"

The _alcor_ blinked his colorless eyes and made a show of looking toward the corner where Spock stood. At fourteen he was almost as tall as his father but with the typical gangliness of an adolescent, his hands too big for his wrists, his shoulders narrow.

A firmness on Amanda's shoulder—Sarek's hand, shepherding her away.

"You do Spock no favors if you give into your emotions now," she heard him say at her ear.

Releasing her pent-up breath, she said, "He's an arrogant, self-important—"

"He is," Sarek said with an equanimity that threatened to make her even angrier, "and he is also the leader of his people. We have no other options but to deal with him. The Trastians have a great deal of valuable expertise they could bring to the Federation—"

"And lots of wrong-headed ideas," Amanda said hotly. "Stable society, indeed! Moribund is more like it—each individual replaced by someone just like him, never changing. Who's to say that the _alcor_ and his descendants should always be the leaders? Maybe someone else would do a better job!"

"The Trastians claim that they have evolved to fulfill specific functions," Sarek said, walking Amanda toward the corner where Spock still stood alone. "The _alcor's_ genetic temperament makes him best suited for his leadership role—"

"Do you believe that!"

Although she couched it as a question, Amanda knew that Sarek heard the challenge in her words—heard that she was throwing down a verbal gauntlet.

Instead of looking annoyed, Sarek was amused.

"I was merely repeating what the Trastians believe," he said. "I make no judgments. I am doing what I heard you tell Spock to do two days ago—going along to get along."

Amanda tried to hold onto her anger and failed.

"Don't either of you say a word," she said, glancing from Sarek to Spock and back again.

With a tilt of his head, Sarek turned and headed back into the crowd. At her elbow, Amanda felt Spock shift from one foot to another, and she said, "Go make yourself useful. See those two young men over there? One is the son…the _manifestation_…of the _alcor_. I don't know who the other one is. Go…visit."

It was almost cruel, forcing him to socialize when he was clearly uncomfortable, but the _alcor's_ comment about _unacceptable sons_ rankled her, made her want to put Spock front and center, his intellect obvious, her pride in him justified. A childish reaction—no, a human one. Well, she shouldn't have to rein in every human impulse.

The rest of the evening was a blur of divided loyalties—playing the ambassador's wife, making small talk with the other Trastians, introducing them to the Vulcan staff—all the while keeping an eye on Spock as he stood and talked, awkwardly, stiffly, with the two Trastian teens. By the end of the night she was exhausted from worry.

"I know that wasn't easy," she told him as they rode home together in the flitter after the reception. From her place in the pilot's seat, she could see Spock's face in the rear mirror. On the passenger side, Sarek thumbed through his PADD but Amanda could tell from the cant of his head that he was listening closely. "I appreciate what you did," she said, catching Spock's eye in the mirror.

Instead of answering, Spock gave her a long glance before looking out the window of the flitter, his way of both acknowledging her and then cutting her out of his attention.

_I have done what you asked—now leave me alone._

He didn't say it, but he didn't need to. She recognized the look from her own teenaged days.

_Going along to get along._ How many times had she bitten her tongue when her mother had embarrassed her in public, had made a ridiculous demand?

She opened her mouth to say something—an apology, perhaps, or to offer a story about herself at 14—when Sarek turned toward Spock and said, "The _alcor_ appreciated your attentions to his manifestation as well. He has asked that we allow him to visit our home tomorrow. I expect you to continue to be helpful."

"The _alcor's_ son? At our house?" Amanda blurted out.

"Indeed. Do you object?"

"You should have asked me!"

"I am asking you now."

"I thought you said he was coming."

"He is," Sarek said, the light from the PADD casting eerie shadows in the dark flitter. "However, I can tell him that the offer is rescinded."

Amanda gripped the flitter's steering bar and huffed loudly.

"Oh, no," she grumbled. "I'm not about to create an intergalactic incident!"

The next morning she was sipping her first cup of tea when the _alcor's_ party arrived—not the large retinue Amanda had envisioned, but the _alcor's_ son—she could barely bring herself to call him a _manifestation_—and the other young Trastian she had seen the night before. The morning was chilly and Amanda led them into the kitchen and handed them both cups of tea, motioning for them to sit at the table.

"I understand," she said, settling herself in her own chair and picking her cup back up, "that you would like to spend some time seeing what ordinary Vulcans do all day."

"You are hardly ordinary Vulcans," the _alcor's_ son said, and Amanda flushed, unsure whether or not his words were intended as an insult. Before she could reply, the other young Trastian said, "Your hospitality is most welcome, Lady Ambassador."

His tone was soothing, calculated to mollify her. Amanda realized that she didn't mind.

For the first time, she gave the other Trastian her attention. Short and squat like the _alcor's_ son, he was less striking, his eyes deep purple, his hand gestures fluid and practiced. On closer inspection, Amanda decided he was older than the _alcor's_ son, too, though not by much. Both young men wore heavy form-fitting jackets embellished with metal studs and pins. A reddish fuzz covered the top of their heads—very fine hair cut short, most likely.

"Call me Amanda," she said, offering to pour more tea. "And what should I call you?"

Neither Trastian spoke. Instead, they looked at Amanda blankly.

Finally the _alcor's_ son said, "You may call me _alcor_. And this is _rinx_."

"Alcor and Rinx? Those are your names?"

"They are who we are," the _alcor's_ son said. "Or who we will become when the prior manifestations die. We do not have names as you do."

"I see," Amanda said, but in fact her head was spinning. "Well, I understand what the _alcor_ does," she said, "but tell me about…_rinx_."

To her surprise, the _alcor's_ son spoke.

"The _rinx_ is the personal attendant of the _alcor_," he said. "Without his help, the _alcor_ would waste much time on menial matters."

As he spoke, the _alcor's_ son flicked his fingers in the other Trastian's direction—not quite a dismissal, but close. To her dismay, Amanda felt her face flush.

_A servant? A slave?_ Even as the words echoed in her mind, she realized she was being Terran-centric, parochial. These people had evolved their own customs and traditions, a social order that worked for them. Judging them by human standards would be wrong.

Or even by Vulcan standards. _Infinite diversity in infinite combinations_ suggested that the Trastian culture was as valid as any other.

Beautiful in theory—but in practice?

She wasn't sure. Shouldn't choice and dignity factor in somewhere?

If the young Trastian—Rinx, she thought, unwilling to think of him as a _what_ instead of a _who_—was content with his role in life, who was she to object?

But setting aside her moral objections was like trying to ignore a toothache, or like trying to run with splints on her feet—hobbling her with a nagging discontent.

"How about breakfast?" she asked, and seeing uncomprehending stares, she added, "Food? Nourishment? Do you want something to eat?"

"It is not necessary," the _alcor's_ son said.

"What about you?" she said, making eye contact with Rinx. She felt rather than saw the _alcor's_ son react, a twitch of his shoulders, as if he were shrugging off a fly.

"More tea," Rinx said, and again Amanda had the impression that the _alcor's_ son was surprised.

"Spock should be home soon," she said as she refilled Rinx's cup. "He goes for an early run before school."

"Warrior training," the _alcor's_ son said. "I would like to see your military facilities."

From the oven came the smell of flatbread and Amanda rose to take it out.

"Care to try it?" she asked, and as she expected, the _alcor's_ son shook his head. Rinx, on the other hand, darted a glance in his direction before saying, "Yes, please."

"I was unaware that you needed to eat a morning meal," the _alcor's_ son said, and Rinx made what Amanda assumed was the Trastian equivalent of a grimace.

"You did not ask," he said, watching as Amanda sliced wedges of bread. Taking a tentative nibble of the one she offered him, he wrinkled his mouth oddly.

"You like it?" Amanda asked.

With a sudden noise, Rinx spit the wad of wet bread into his hand.

"I'll take that as a _no_," Amanda said, laughing. In the early light filtering into the kitchen, Rinx's skin flushed gray.

"I have upset you!" he said, a note of panic in his voice.

"I am not upset," Amanda said, reaching across the table and giving his forearm a little squeeze. "You're allowed to have your own opinions."

"A dangerous precedent," the _alcor's_ son said, running his hand forward over his fringe of hair.

The sound of the front door opening—the breeze wafting through the hall—and Spock was suddenly standing at one end of the kitchen.

A human would have been sweaty, in disarray, after running in the desert for an hour. Instead, Spock was loose-limbed, alert, his breathing measured as he looked quickly around the room at their guests. Amanda knew that if she asked him later, he would recall where everyone sat, what everyone was doing the moment he arrived.

"Arise," the _alcor's _son said, and Rinx stood up immediately. "I'm ready to see your training ground now."

"If by _training ground_ you mean _school_," Spock said neatly, making his way to the shelf where Amanda stored the tea mugs, "then you may accompany me."

Slipping to a place beside his mother, Spock held out his mug.

"And if by _now_ you mean once Spock has eaten his breakfast," Amanda said, pouring the tea, "then I'll transport all of you there in the flitter."

The same twitch of his shoulders denoting disapproval rippled through the _alcor's_ son. When Amanda set the teapot on the table, Spock made eye contact with her intentionally, looking up at the same moment she blinked. _So, he had noticed that little twitch as well._

"My _rinx _can transport us," the _alcor's_ son said, and rather than protest, Amanda shrugged.

"As you wish," she said, trying to stifle her annoyance. "It will save me the trouble," she said, deliberately leaning toward Rinx.

"Serving this way gives me pleasure," he said in the same soothing voice he had used earlier, and Amanda felt her anger melt away. _Of course he would find meaning in his work. Why shouldn't he?_

But after the boys left—Rinx behind the controls of a borrowed Vulcan flitter—she shook herself.

"It isn't right," she said aloud as she rinsed out the tea mugs and put the leftover bread in the stasis chamber.

When Sarek came home for a midday meal, she resurrected her anger.

"I don't think he even questions what he's doing, how he treats others."

"Why should he?" Sarek said, selecting a ripe _kasa_ from a ceramic bowl in the counter. "He is being groomed to take over as the _alcor_ one day. From my own observations, the current _alcor _considers no one else when making decisions."

At that Amanda was caught up short. Sarek so rarely complained that the slight note of exasperation in his words crashed like thunder in her ears.

Suddenly she could see it—the difficult morning at the embassy, Sarek struggling to make the _alcor_ comfortable, each effort rebuffed. Food and drink refused. Chairs sent away and replaced with softer ones, then harder ones. The temperature in the meeting room adjusted so low that the Vulcan staff members donned their outer cloaks and kept their hands in their pockets.

"Maybe you shouldn't be so agreeable," she said, pursing her mouth.

"To what end? The _alcor_ would take offense, and the mining expertise of the Trastians would be lost to the Federation."

"It might be lost anyway," Amanda said. "The Federation Council isn't going to approve membership for people who treat some of their citizens like trained pets."

"An exaggeration."

"It's true."

"You are basing that conclusion on insufficient data."

"How many Trastians do I need to know to have sufficient data? Besides," she said, snaking her hand into Sarek's, "even if I _do_ have insufficient data, it isn't wrong."

She felt the hum of agreement through his fingers and she grinned.

Her good mood lasted only until the Trastians returned with Spock that evening, late enough that she had begun to worry. When he walked through the front door, Spock's expression warned her off from asking anything. Hesitantly she tried to feel him through their bond, pushing aside his normal shields like lifting a velvet curtain. He was furious—not with her but with the _alcor's_ son, his emotions crackling and snapping like a loose electric current. Hastily she withdrew.

"I require immediate sustenance," the _alcor's _son said as he followed Spock into the house. "You will instruct my _rinx_ on how to obtain and prepare it."

He blinked his colorless eyes at her and leaned heavily against a small table in the entryway, scattering the PADDs and keys and tablets stacked there. Rinx dropped at once to his knees to gather them up.

Crossing her arms, Amanda said, "I am busy at the moment, but you are welcome to help yourself to something in the kitchen. There's fruit and bread in the stasis container."

"I require substantial sustenance. You will cease what you are doing and help my _rinx_."

From the corner of her eye she saw Spock moving closer, though whether out of some protective posture or as a threatening gesture, she wasn't sure.

The _alcor's_ son noted it, too.

"If you touch me," he said, "my _rinx_ will harm you."

"No one's going to harm anyone in this house!" Amanda said, heat rising to her face. "You need to leave. Now."

"I leave when I want to leave," the _alcor's_ son said. "Not when a _rinx _tells me to leave."

For a wild moment Amanda's vision blurred.

"I couldn't see straight," she told Sarek later as they sat side-by-side on the sofa after dinner. "I've always heard people say that—that they were so mad they couldn't see straight, but I didn't know it was true. Thank goodness the Trastians left right after that."

Instead of any of the possible responses Sarek might have made—aping ignorance of the idiom, for instance, or gently chastising her for letting her emotions control her—Sarek surprised her by pulling inward, growing so still and distant that for a moment she thought he was ill.

"Sarek?"

With a deliberate motion, he held out his hand to her and she let her palm drift to his. For a moment he remained silent and then his frustration flooded her.

"Accommodating the _alcor_ has not advanced our understanding of each other," he said slowly.

"Oh, you understand each other," Amanda said. "He understands that you'll do whatever he wants. You understand that he's not going to change."

"It's curious," Sarek said, his gaze unfocused. "An alliance between Trastia and the Federation offers many mutual benefits. The Trastians, however, seem unwilling to compromise to reach that goal."

"Maybe they can't."

Turning his gaze on Amanda, Sarek knit his brows together and said, "Explain."

"It's like you said. The Trastians evolved into certain roles. The _alcors_ have always been in control—being bossy and arrogant is in their genes. Maybe they really can't act any other way."

"Their genes are their destiny? I have heard you disclaim against that idea before."

With a sly wink, Amanda said, "The Trastians are changing my mind. If I think they can't control their behavior, then I won't hold them accountable. I won't get so mad at them that I can't see straight."

"That does not help me solve my own challenges with them," Sarek said, and Amanda knew he was only partly joking.

"I've already told you what to do," she said, sidling closer on the sofa. "Stop being so agreeable. Stop giving in to every demand. Start being more like you really are—stubborn and exasperating."

She got up then, the fingers of her left hand trailing down his arm, an invitation sent—and accepted—as he followed her to their bedroom.

When the door chimed the next morning, Amanda was heating water for the tea. Assuming it was Spock returning from his run, she was astonished at the sight of Rinx standing in the gray haze, the borrowed flitter in shadow on the landing pad beside the house.

"What are you doing here?" she asked as she stepped back into the entryway. "Where's the _alcor's_ son?"

With a shambling gait, Rinx made his way to the kitchen and sat down, folding his hands on the table in front of him.

"Forgive me for intruding," he said, nodding as Amanda slid a cup to him. "No one knows I'm here."

"Then why—" she began, but with a sudden leap of logic, she knew why Rinx had come.

"You want asylum," she said, watching the young man's face closely. "You'll need to talk to someone at the embassy and plead your case. I can't speak for the Ambassador, of course, but I think you have a good chance."

Rinx's deep purple eyes seemed to grow darker in the gloom of the kitchen.

"Asylum?"

"I don't know what you call it on Trastia. Political refuge? Safety?"

"You mean, leave Trastia?"

"Yes, if that's what you want. You don't have to stay there if your life is intolerable."

On the hob on the counter the kettle began to boil.

"You can make the life you want," she said, reaching over and pouring water into the ceramic teapot, adding a handful of herbs to steep.

"But," Rinx said, frowning, "I have the life I want. I don't wish to leave my home."

"I don't understand," Amanda said. "Then why are you here?"

"Ah," Rinx said, his expression lifting, his hands fluttering softly before him, "I wanted to thank you. Yesterday was most illuminating. How fortunate you and the Ambassador are to have a mutual manifestation!"

For a moment Amanda heard Rinx's words without comprehending them.

"Our mutual manifestation? You mean…Spock?"

"Such an interesting way to reproduce," Rinx said. "The sum greater than the parts."

Amanda laughed.

"Well," she said, "that's one way to put it. I'm sure Spock will agree."

"Perhaps you will tell him," Rinx said, his eyes following Amanda's motions as she poured him a cup of tea. "I am sorry that our time together ended badly."

"Spock said there was some sort of argument," Amanda said, "with the _alcor's_ son."

Rinx nodded.

"He objected to the idea that Spock's future is undetermined, since he is both Vulcan and human. On our world, we would never consider ignoring our genetic destiny. Such an idea is…scandalous."

Amanda took a sip of her tea and considered what to say.

"We believe," she said at last, "that our genes are only part of what drives our decisions. We also exercise our free will. Spock can choose which parts of his Vulcan and human heritage are authentic for him. Does that make sense?"

Rinx set his empty tea cup on the table and made the odd wrinkle of his mouth that seemed to approximate a grimace.

"You can change your destiny?"

"We make it," Amanda said.

"I have to go," Rinx said, "before they miss me. I wanted to say goodbye without…anyone…else to hear me."

"Goodbye? Sarek didn't say the negotiations were finished."

But Rinx said nothing more, just gave his same smile and shambled out. In a moment Amanda heard the flitter roar to life and lift off.

Sure enough, the Trastians left that day, the negotiations to begin admission to the Federation halted. When he told Amanda about it, Sarek sounded almost rueful—his disappointment close to the surface.

"I should have taken your advice," he told her over dinner, Spock sitting at one end of the table quietly spooning his soup. "So much effort wasted trying to compromise with people who apparently are incapable of it."

"Oh, I don't know," Amanda said. "You might have planted a few seeds of change. More importantly, you learned a valuable lesson. The next time someone accuses the Vulcan delegation of being difficult, you'll understand what they mean."

The tiniest hesitation in lifting his spoon to his mouth gave Spock away. Without moving her head, Amanda cut her eyes at her son.

"And don't you think you are off the hook," she told him. "You're just as stubborn as your father."

She saw something click in his features—a hint that he was feeling mischievous. Setting his spoon in his bowl, he looked first at her and then at Sarek.

"My genetic destiny," he said. Waiting a beat, he picked his spoon back up and said, "You can hardly call me to account for it."

"I can and I will," Amanda said, struggling to keep the smile off her face. "Just try me."

X X X X X X X

The story takes less than five minutes to tell, stripped, as it is, of the more personal details. No need to reveal too much—such as his own struggle with destiny and choice, for instance. Instead, he sticks to the facts about his father's failure to convince the Trastians to apply for membership in the Federation.

"I'm confused," Cadet Uhura says when he finishes. "I thought you said your mother's advice worked. That she told your father to be true to himself instead of trying to kowtow to the _alcor_."

"Advice he did not take," Spock adds, and the cadet frowns.

"Then how—"

"Last month the Trastians became signatories to the Federation charter, eleven years after meeting with the Vulcans. The new _alcor_ and his advisor have begun the social changes necessary for consideration as members of the Federation."

"The _alcor's_ son," Cadet Uhura says immediately, "and Rinx. They're in charge now."

"Indeed," Spock replies, allowing himself to feel pleasure at her quick intuition. "The Trastian mining syndicate has already signed an agreement to supply highly refined iridium for long-range sensor array refits."

_A gifted student in every way._ Perhaps he should reconsider her request for tutoring.

"As I stated earlier," he says, watching her closely to gauge her response, "the pronunciation of your Vulcan fricatives is fine."

At some level he is aware that his abrupt change of topic startles her. She straightens in her chair and seems to pull herself from a distance.

"Yes," she says, a shadow crossing her features, "you did state that. However, _fine_ has variable definitions. _Fine_ is not acceptable."

As she speaks, the cadet dips her head for emphasis, sending her ponytail swinging over her shoulder.

A distant memory tugs at his consciousness, but he's too distracted to recall it at the moment.

_Later, when he meditates._

"Very well," he says, "I'll ask Cadet Ellison to add you to my schedule."

A simple tutorial—nothing intimate or suggestive. Once a week, twice.

More if she insists.

"I have a class to prepare for," he says, standing up and moving toward the door of the break room. "And you have an instructor to see. About the extra work?"

A flicker of a frown and then the cadet's expression breaks into a smile, her dark eyes crinkled at the corners.

"Oh, that," she says, laughing. "I already have. I took care of it just now."

And with that she picks up her backpack and passes him in the doorway, her lips pressed into a knowing smile.

**A/N: This story is a labor of love. Thanks to everyone who reads it—and double thanks to everyone who takes the time to leave a review. Your kindness is much appreciated.**

**It's been an exciting week for **_**Star Trek 2009**_** fans—with many actors joining the cast of the new movie and principal photography starting. I hope the news will renew the fans' interest in reading about our favorite crew! **

**In the meantime, if you are a "Thor" fan—or a Marvel Comics buff—Startrekfanwriter is currently having fun over in Thor land with a Loki/Darcy story, "Love and Other Lies." **


	6. Course Corrections

**Chapter Six: Course Corrections  
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**Disclaimer: I own nothing but the mischief.**

"Are you busy, Commander?"

_Of course he is._

Humans ask Spock this often and the question never ceases to baffle him. When is anyone _not_ busy? Is he really so different from, say, Cadet Ellison—who even as he stands at Spock's office doorway, rocking gently on the balls of his feet, waiting for an answer—must be remembering and noticing and calculating and a hundred other mental activities that hardly bear cataloguing?

He starts to say so but pauses.

"Don't be so quick to answer a question," his mother has cautioned him more than once. "It makes you sound arrogant, or worse—indifferent, like you don't care enough to give a serious response. And don't give me that look. I'm just telling you how it sounds to _humans_ when you bark out a reply that fast."

As much as he hates to acknowledge it, there is something to what his mother said. Even his cousins—the people who know him best, who have known him the longest—sometimes take offense.

And often over that odd question about being busy.

"But you don't look busy," he remembers his cousin Rachel complaining when they were both young teenagers and he spent one summer at his Aunt Cecilia's house in Seattle. Much of his energy that June and July was spent turning down Rachel's invitations to join her in mischief of one kind or another—giving as his reason that he was busy.

"You aren't doing anything but sitting there," Rachel added.

"I am thinking," he told her, and she wrinkled her nose at him.

"You're boring!"

She flopped dramatically on the other end of the sofa where Spock sat cross-legged.

Eyeing her for a moment, he said, "Things are not in and of themselves boring. You mean that you feel bored. That is an emotional state that you can control."

"No, I can't!" Rachel said, throwing her arms over her head like someone in surrender. "This day is boring! And you aren't helping."

"Perhaps you should read your book," Spock said, glancing at the small PADD Rachel had abandoned on the coffee table earlier.

"My book is boring!"

"You are letting your emotions affect your judgment," Spock said primly. "The book is not boring. You are bored. There is a distinction. Your lack of interest, the fact that you slept fewer than five hours last night—"

"How do you know how long I slept?" Rachel said, her eyes narrowed. "Were you spying on me?"

"I heard you talking on your comm. Repeatedly."

Rachel's face turned pink—a sign that she was embarrassed? _Surely she didn't think she was keeping her activities secret._

"Those were important conversations," she said, crossing her arms and resting her chin on her chest.

"And today you are too tired to be interested in your book," Spock said.

"I'm not interested in my book because it's a boring book."

A few years earlier Spock would have continued to argue his point. Now he simply raised an eyebrow, a useful bit of nonverbal communication he had picked up from his mother.

All that runs through his mind as Cadet Ellison stands in his doorway. One second passes, then two.

"No," he says, looking up at the cadet. "I am not busy. Please have a seat."

J.C. Ellison is one of the few students Spock has taught more than once at the Academy. Almost as tall as Spock, as thin as a runner, and with long fingers that are often in motion ruffling his dark, wavy hair, J. C. is the first teaching aide who hasn't quit or asked for a transfer after a few weeks.

Not that Cadet Ellison has been a completely satisfactory aide. More than once Spock has been impatient with how much direction he needs, how after two months he fails to anticipate what Spock needs him to do.

A minor annoyance, considering how in every other measure J. C. performs well, how unsatisfactory Spock's previous aides have been—cadets too anxious or distracted to be worth the time and trouble to train.

"Thank you, sir," J. C. says, slipping into the chair to the side of Spock's desk. "I see you've been keeping up with the news from the border." He waves his hand towards the computer monitor showing a news account of an empty 20th century Earth sleeper ship found in a decaying orbit around a remote Beta Quadrant planet. Speculation is rampant that the ship dates from the Eugenics Wars—though Starfleet has been hesitant to confirm any rumors.

"In a way, I want to talk about—_that_," J.C. says, pointing to the monitor. "About what Starfleet is doing out there."

Tilting his head, Spock waits and J. C. flushes slightly and continues.

"In fact, I was hoping you could give me some advice."

At once Spock is on alert. Too often when humans say they want advice, what they actually want is validation of a decision they have already made.

Or they have other ulterior motives. He feels a wave of uneasiness as he recalls the last time a cadet asked him for advice—Cadet Uhura, deftly maneuvering him into twice a week Vulcan language tutorials.

"Your Academy advisor might be a better choice," he says, but J. C. shakes his head.

"No, sir," he says. "I need _your_ advice."

"Very well," Spock says, offering to shut the door if J.C. requires privacy. "Proceed."

"My father," J. C. begins, looking down as he laces his fingers together, "has been asking me where I'm applying to grad school."

Glancing up, he pauses, and Spock wonders if some sort of response is required or expected—just the kind of odd hiccup in conversations that often trip him up. No appropriate response comes to mind and he waits for J. C. to continue.

"He hasn't said anything directly, but I know he wants me to go to the Mars Institute like he did."

Again J. C. pauses and darts a glance at Spock. _What does this comment have to do with needing advice?_

Perhaps J. C. is asking Spock to speculate on Dr. Ellison's preference for the Mars Institute. After all, Spock knows Dr. Ellison as a colleague, someone who works in the subspace array lab, who teaches advanced engineering design classes, the civilian professor who over the summer took a small group of Academy students including Cadet Uhura to Mars to help calibrate the new sensor array being installed.

Of course, Dr. Ellison's familiarity with the Mars Institute would prejudice him in wanting his son to do graduate work there. That conclusion is self-evident. J. C. must mean something else.

Is he asking Spock for his personal assessment of the Institute? That, too, seems unlikely. Just last week, J. C. was in the break room when Cadet Uhura was making tea before her tutorial. Setting a mug on the table before Spock, she asked him if he was familiar with the Institute's array program.

"I have not been to Mars since my cousin's graduation," he said. Even as spoke he regretted the familiarity of the words, the unspoken intimacy they implied. He never talked about his family to his Academy associates, never shared the kinds of details that someone could turn to their advantage—or rather, to his disadvantage—a habit learned from hard service as a Vulcan schoolboy.

His occasional slips of the tongue with Cadet Uhura—telling her stories about his mother, for instance—had to stop. If he was going to meet with her several times a week to tutor her—to watch her lips form the sibilant consonants and hear her tongue shape the guttural vowels of a language as evocative to him as Vulcan—then he had to become the instructor he knew most students believed him to be—distant, impersonal, unmoved.

Now he sits up a fraction straighter and gives J. C. his attention.

"You said you wanted my advice," Spock prompts, and J. C. jumps slightly in his chair.

"The Mars Institute has a well-regarded linguistics program," he said, "but so does the Nairobi Center. And it's smaller and closer."

"I am unable to offer any comparisons," Spock says. "As I mentioned last week, I have not been to Mars in some time, and I was unaware that the Nairobi Center has a graduate linguistics department."

"Oh, yeah," J. C. says, shifting again in his chair. "Uhura's aunt is a guest lecturer there. I toured it over our interim break."

Against his will Spock recalls being a witness as Cadet Uhura leaned up to receive a kiss from J. C. one evening outside the language building.

But that had been 247 days ago. His observations since then suggest that their relationship is not as intimate as the public kiss implied.

This revelation that J. C. traveled home with Cadet Uhura over the interim break changes the equation again, forces an unfamiliar pressure in his sternum that makes his breath hitch.

Leaning forward, J. C. says, "It's just—I'm not even sure I want to do graduate work. At least not right now."

Another stab of pressure in his sternum catches Spock off guard a second time. Cadet Ellison does _not_ want to go to the Nairobi Institute, despite having visited there recently. Perhaps his travel in Kenya was just that—a simple evaluation of a possible future.

Academic or otherwise.

_Which he's decided against._

"You have something else in mind," Spock says, feeling the unexplained pressure in his chest ease slightly.

"I want to apply for active duty when I graduate," J. C. says in such a rush that Spock has to strain to understand him. "I want to serve on a starship. To _do_ something instead of heading right back to more school."

Taking his mother's advice, Spock waits a beat before answering.

"Your final year at the Academy is rather late for changing your plans."

At that J. C. looks up and says, "I realize that, Commander. I'm missing several courses—"

"Tactical training. The command strategy seminar. To name a few."

J. C. shakes his head.

"Maybe it's crazy to even try," he says. "It's just—I know my father enjoys his work as a teacher. And I probably would, too. But first I want to go see what's out there. I want to be a part of a team, not some isolated academic stuck in an ivory tower somewhere."

Looking up quickly, J. C. says, "I'm sorry, sir. I didn't mean—well, I'm not saying that academia isn't important or that what you and my father do doesn't matter. It's just that I want to be part of something bigger right now. In a way, it's Uhura's fault. She drives me crazy keeping me posted on the _Enterprise's_ updates. You'd think she was personally responsible for building it."

His brows knit into an uncharacteristic frown, J. C. sighs.

"I want to be that excited about something, that committed."

He sits up and drapes his hands on his thighs, a sign he is preparing to stand and leave.

"You're right, Commander," he says, his tone unmistakably sad, even to Spock. "I should have thought this through earlier, back when I could have done something about it."

A young man struggling with two possible futures—not just struggling, but caught between his father's expectations and his own desires.

Perhaps Cadet Ellison is right, that Spock might have some advice to offer.

"There are always possibilities," Spock says.

For the first time since their conversation began, J. C. smiles.

"Sir?"

"If you are willing to double your course load next semester, you could make up some of the missing work."

"Will the Dean—"

"Two of the required classes are not being offered," Spock says, and from the corner of his eye he sees J. C.'s expression fall. "However, you might be able to convince the instructors to let you take them as independent studies."

At once the cadet brightens and Spock is almost embarrassed for him, at how easily he vacillates from despair to happiness.

"Thank you, sir!" J. C. says.

"Of course," Spock says, "there is no guarantee that there will be a posting available when you graduate. The _Enterprise _is more than two years away from launch. Only the _Farragut_ and the _Camden_ have regular rotations scheduled before then."

"You two look busy."

Cadet Uhura's voice catches Spock completely by surprise. Standing in the doorway, she lets her backpack swing off her shoulder and slide to the floor beside her.

"I'm a few minutes early," she says. "I'll come back."

"That's okay," J.C. says, scooting back his chair and standing up. "The Commander and I are finished."

"You sure?"

"I'll tell you all about it later," he says, flashing her a grin that she returns.

Spock looks away.

"Is this the topic for today?"

When he glances up at her, Spock sees Cadet Uhura peering at his computer monitor and the news story about the derelict sleeper ship. However, he has tagged a different article for their tutorial, one dealing with a fungus spreading through the desert plants in the southern hemisphere of Vulcan. He's already made a list of vocabulary he expects she won't know—has pulled out three examples of syntax inversion characteristic of scientific journal writing.

He starts to tell her so but she places the tip of her finger near the monitor and says, "I saw a little bit about this on the news vid this morning. Do you really think it might be an Augment sleeper ship?"

She glances over her shoulder, her look so intense and earnest that he immediately abandons his prepared lesson.

"Possibly," he says. "Years ago, authorities on Vulcan were approached by Augments who said they knew of the whereabouts of a sleeper ship. As far as I know, that ship was never found."

"Really! Why not?"

He realizes that he has moved forward gradually, incrementally, in his chair until he is uncomfortably close to the cadet. Leaning back quickly, he says, "The story is rather long. Perhaps we should stick to the published account here."

It's a dodge, a way to keep his resolve to be less personal and more professional. No more stories, no revelations.

No near misses—moments when that unwanted pressure in his sternum catches him up short.

Placing her hands on the desk as if to brace herself, she says, "What do you know? You have to tell me!"

He doesn't, in fact, have to do anything of the sort. He can, and he should, remind her that the sole purpose they are together right now is to improve her spoken Vulcan—focus her attention on the persistent slip in her glottal stops—redirect her attention to the unfamiliar vocabulary in the news stories.

_Augment_, for example, is not a word with a ready Vulcan translation.

He opens his mouth to tell her so when she does something that completely disarms him.

She tilts her head and cocks one eyebrow, such an uncanny imitation that he blinks.

"You can't offer something and then not give it," she says, and Spock closes his mouth and swallows.

She's watching him as if she can see him sifting his thoughts. That idea is so disconcerting that he feels a wave of heat flood his torso.

Why not tell the story? It is, after all, a matter of public record, available to anyone who looks up the file.

"It all started," he says slowly, steepling his fingers and shifting his posture, "the day my mother was kidnapped."

X X X X X

"The pictures don't do them justice."

Amanda's voice was barely above a whisper, yet she had the distinct impression that the six men standing in a group across the crowded meeting hall heard her. The tallest one—a burly man as muscled as a wrestler, swiveled his head in her direction and stared with eyes so blue that they looked unnatural.

Which, Amanda thought, they might be. The men were members of the Traders, a nomadic tribe of space travelers descended from genetically enhanced humans who had fled Earth at the end of the Eugenics Wars in the 20th century.

In most history books they were called Augments, though they rarely referred to themselves that way. Regardless of what they were called, historians agreed that their development had been disastrous, leading to global insurrections and instability until they were finally destroyed or driven off the planet.

In the chaos after the war, the number of Augments who managed to escape—most in long-distance sleeper ships—was unknown. Generations grew up fearing their return, hearing stories of supermen whose prowess was matched by their boundless ambition, supermen who wouldn't allow themselves to be beaten by mere mortals a second time.

The Traders were the best-known of the Augments, but even they existed more in legend than in fact. Distant explorers in the Beta Quadrant often told of brushes with men in small attack ships who boarded quickly and took all the freight before anyone had time to react. Sometimes unlucky barge captains were found adrift in the shipping lanes, alone on their empty ships, telling unbelievable tales of men so charismatic that they could talk a loyal crew into mutiny.

Most of the other Augments were believed to be further out in the quadrant, somewhere under the rule—or under the thumb—of Colonel Green or Khan Noonien Singh. At least one remote Federation outpost was tasked with doing nothing more than keeping an eye out for possible Augment activity.

Yet for the most part they remained as elusive as some mythical will-o-the-wisp, just out of reach.

When a man calling himself Sarab Alande showed up at the Vulcan embassy saying he was a member of the Traders and offering information about where to find the other Augments, the Federation Council offered to send negotiators immediately.

"No humans," Alande insisted. "The last time my people were on Earth, humans tried to destroy us."

Sarek became the lead negotiator, and for a week Amanda saw little of him except for snatches on the news vids. There he was, almost dwarfed by the tall Traders, most with long blonde dreadlocks and the same piercing blue eyes as Sarab.

"But why now?" Amanda asked on one of Sarek's rare trips home to shower and change clothes. "What's motivating them to come forward now after all this time?"

Sitting on the edge of the bed to lace up his boot, Sarek glanced up and said, "Sarab says they are ready to return to Earth. That they want to settle instead of continuing to roam, that they've never found a place that is suitable for establishing a long term colony."

"That doesn't answer my question at all," Amanda said with a huff. "I mean, why _now_? Surely they didn't just decide they were homesick after all these centuries. Do they have a new leader who's pushing them to return? Is that what this Sarab is doing?"

"Unknown," Sarek said, picking up his other boot and slipping it over his foot. "Does it matter why? Sarab says they are willing to trade information about where to find the other rogue Augments in exchange for repatriation to Earth."

"Of course it matters! If they want to return because of some catastrophe—if they are starving because of a worldwide drought, for instance, then I wouldn't be so suspicious of them."

"Amanda," Sarek said, standing up and slipping his arms into his robe, "these are not the same people who fought in Earth's Eugenics Wars."

"But they're Augments, Sarek. They're bigger and smarter and more dangerous than ordinary humans!"

"So are Vulcans," Sarek said, tipping his head toward her, "and we seem to have found some sort of…accommodation."

No matter how tired she was, how annoyed, how put upon or misunderstood she felt, at those moments when Sarek teased her she felt a visceral flip in her stomach—_love_, she knew, wrongly assigned to the heart-—a flutter in her midsection that yoked her to him.

As she followed Sarek to the front door and watched as he started up his hoverbike, she felt Spock at her hip, barely touching her. At five he was beyond asking for open affection—in fact, lately he shied away from her touch if she reached out to tousle his hair or pull his jacket into place.

But sometimes at odd moments he was suddenly there at her side, his eyes focused ahead on whatever had her attention, as if he was determined to see the world through her point of view.

That evening as she watched the Traders from across the embassy meeting hall, she reached out briefly to check on Spock. In the part of her mind always reserved for him, she felt the buzz and click and hum that was his signature when he was busy—his thoughts always in motion, one idea leading to another or branching out into several parallel avenues or circling back to the starting point.

Whatever he was doing he was fine—and she felt a surge of gratitude to Sybok who never complained about being asked to stay with his little brother while Amanda worked or—as on this night—attended embassy events.

"Amanda," Sarek said, and she looked up as the leader—Sarab Alande, obviously—made his way slowly through the crowd toward them.

Reaching out and taking Amanda's fingers in his own, Sarab startled her by lifting her hand to his lips like a courtier in an ancient history text.

"Lady Amanda, I presume," he said, smiling as he released her hand. To her right she felt Sarek stiffen.

"And you must be Mr. Alande."

"Sarab, please," the tall man said. "My people recognize no hierarchies, no titles."

"Indeed," Amanda said, lifting one eyebrow. "I thought the Augments were fiercely competitive."

Immediately Sarab's smile evaporated and he narrowed his gaze.

"Human propaganda," he said.

"Well-documented history," Amanda countered. She felt a prickle of concern from Sarek.

She sensed something shifting in Sarab and his smile suddenly returned, though his eyes gave him away. He was not amused.

"Written by the victors of war," he said. "Not exactly unbiased sources. My ancestors weren't around to serve as correctives for the narrative."

"Neither were the 37 million who died in those wars," Amanda said, feeling Sarek's prickle of concern blossom into something more. She darted a glance in his direction.

"But I don't mean to be rude," she quickly added. "You're right, of course. That happened a long time ago. My husband reminds me that holding you and your people accountable for the past is…unfair."

"But not unwise?"

Sarab flashed another humorless smile. A warning?

"That remains to be seen, doesn't it?" she said.

"That's why we're here," Sarab said, looking directly at Sarek for the first time since he crossed the room.

Excusing himself, Sarab headed back to the other Traders who were gathered near the door.

Before Sarek could speak, Amanda looked up at him and said, "I know. I shouldn't have said anything,"

The rest of the evening was a typically dreary Vulcan affair—not quite a working meeting, not quite a meal. Two embassy staffers pressed into service as waiters walked around with spare trays of beverages and fruit. For the most part, the Vulcans talked softly with each other while the Traders stood uneasily together.

No music, no entertainment of any kind. By the end of the evening, Amanda had a headache.

"The Traders have proposed an amendment to the repatriation application," Sarek told her as she gathered her outer wrap and headed to the transport garage where her flitter was parked. "I agreed to look at it tonight. Go on ahead—I will be home as soon as I can."

A quick brush of his fingers communicated his unmistakable worry. Surely he wasn't concerned about her traveling at night alone. Crime on Vulcan was almost unknown; flitters were safe; their home wasn't far away.

The amendment, then. He didn't trust the Traders. With a guilty start, she realized that her own negative attitude must have affected him.

The garage was brightly lit but Amanda felt uneasy as she walked across the open space and unlocked her flitter. A ghost of Sarek's mood, most likely—like a stretched wire connecting the two of them, vibrating on both ends.

Pressing the starter, she waited a moment as the motor warmed up—and then it happened.

The overhead lights in the garage went dark at the same time that the door of the flitter was flung open.

"Move over!"

She recognized Sarab's voice at once.

"Move over!" he said again, and she felt his fingers around her arm like a vise.

"You won't get away," she said, beating back her panic. "Sarek already knows something is wrong."

"He's being detained, and I don't want to get away," Sarab said, low and insistent. "I want to talk to you. In private."

"And you thought you needed to abduct me to do that?"

The fingers on her arm tightened and she was shoved roughly to the opposite seat.

"If I have to," Sarab said. His next words were muffled by the sound of the flitter being started. Grabbing the door handle, Amanda struggled to open it before the flitter had time to lift off.

She was yanked back before the latch could release—and then the flitter was up and out of the garage and heading into the night.

They flew in silence for only a minute before the flitter began its descent. From the window Amanda tried to recognize the terrain, but all she could tell for certain was that they were somewhere south of the city. In the distance she could see the lights of Shi'Kahr. In the other direction were featureless hills.

When the flitter came to a stop, she reached again for the door latch but Sarab grabbed her hand.

"I don't want to hurt you," he said, his expression hidden in the shadows cast by the dash lights. "But I will if you make me."

"What every bully says," Amanda retorted, and to her surprise, Sarab suddenly let go of her.

"I—" he started, pausing suddenly. "I…am sorry. I wouldn't have resorted to this but I'm desperate. _We're_ desperate."

Nothing Sarab could have said would have astonished her more.

"Why me? You could have spoken to someone at the embassy."

For a moment Sarab seemed to mull over his answer. Amanda sat and tried to read his expression in the dim light.

"I'm telling _you_ because you don't trust me. If I can convince _you_—"

Amanda shifted in her seat.

"I won't talk to a kidnapper."

As she watched, something shifted in Sarab's posture. For another beat he was silent, and then he said, "Here."

With a jerk of his thumb, he hit the release and opened both doors of the flitter. Sliding out of the pilot's side, he walked around the front of the flitter and waited as Amanda scooted over.

"May I?" he asked, motioning to the passenger's seat.

A curt nod and they were on their way.

Her first intention was to head back toward the city lights and to the embassy.

But as she approached a familiar turnoff, she banked the flitter to the left and headed home. Sarab looked up immediately.

"I won't listen to a kidnapper," she said, "but I will listen to a guest."

If Sybok was surprised to see her with one of the Traders from the news vids in tow, he didn't show it.

"Where's Spock?" Amanda asked as she showed Sarab to the sitting room, and Sybok pointed to an intricate arrangement of colored tiles laid out on a low table.

"Asleep," Sybok said. "He made me promise to show you this. His idea for some sort of garden path. He said you would understand."

And she did. Earlier that day she had complained that the new plant soaker was muddying her shoes when she worked in the garden. Spock had said nothing at the time, had simply looked at her with a seriousness that should have alerted her that he would take her complaint as a challenge.

From the corner of her eye she noticed Sarab listening to the exchange. With a nod, Sybok retreated to the kitchen to make tea.

"Your son is an Augment?" Sarab asked as Amanda settled herself in a chair opposite the sofa.

Adjusting a pillow to give herself time to consider how to respond, Amanda said, "Not the way you mean it. He shares Vulcan and human genes, but he isn't genetically enhanced."

"But genetically engineered."

"In a sense, I suppose," she said, feeling a wave of annoyance. She was, she knew, sensitive about the subject—not only because the stigma of genetic engineering lingered, but because underneath her joy and pride in Spock she was always aware of a sorrow, too—as if she had failed him, or failed Sarek, or even failed her own humanity by needing medical intervention to have a child.

Sorrow that it took the deaths of two children to convince her to seek the help of the healers—pregnancies lost at four months, a girl and a boy—perfect, beautiful children, with no explanation ever given for why they failed to thrive.

"You said you wanted to talk," she said, and Sarab squared his shoulders.

"You are not wrong to be wary of the Augments," he said. "We are as our ancestors were—strong and ambitious. We've been bred to be leaders."

"The word you mean is _dictators_."

"A matter of semantics," Sarab said, cutting his eyes at Amanda and giving a sly smile. "At any rate, all that is changing. At least for us."

"What do you mean?"

Sarab looked up as Sybok walked into the room carrying two tea mugs.

"Thank you, Sybok," Amanda said, answering his unspoken query.

_I'm alright. Your father is on the way._

She took a moment to feel Sarek's presence in her mind—and sent him reassurance that she was safe.

As Sybok left the room, Sarab began to speak again.

"There is no future for us," he said. "Among my own people, it has been many years since any child lived to term. Our medics tell us our genes are no longer viable—too many years of breeding only with other Augments. If we don't return to Earth—if we don't rejoin the larger human population—in a few decades there will be no trace that we ever existed. The Traders will die out."

_Not a bad thing_, Amanda thought, but she bit back the words. Her own attitude troubled her, her knee-jerk reaction born of stories she had grown up hearing about the Augments and the Eugenics Wars.

She couldn't deny her feelings. To try would be a waste of energy.

With a sigh, she cupped her hands around her tea mug.

"Suppose I do believe you," she said. "What can I do? The Vulcans are the ones who will decide whether or not to advance your petition to the Federation Council. It seems to me that your medical issue makes your case stronger—"

"No one can know!"

The panic in Sarab's voice was so intense that Amanda shivered.

"But why—"

"I told you!" he said, his eyes wild. "We were created to rule men, not to be ruled by them. That's what everyone knows, what everyone believes. If we return as dying men—if humans believe we are walking ghosts—they will destroy us."

"But if you return as Augments, humans will fear you."

"Better to be feared than destroyed out of hand. And we will be, if the people of Earth believe they can. You know it's true. Search your own feelings. I saw it in your eyes the first time we spoke."

It _was_ true, and in a rush, Amanda knew that.

Lowering her voice, she said, "You still haven't told me what you need from me."

"Convince the Ambassador to accept our petition. Tell him that Earth is ready to welcome us."

"I'm not sure that's the case," Amanda said, and Sarab shook his head.

"It _will_ be the case if you add your voice. If you show that you trust us—"

"I don't. You tried to kidnap me an hour ago."

"Then consider what we have to trade. I know where a sleeper ship with over 80 Augments is in parking orbit, waiting for a timed countdown before they are revived. As far as they are concerned, the Eugenics Wars just ended. When they wake, they will ready to spread out and conquer. Surely that information is worth something."

"I don't keep secrets from Sarek," Amanda said.

"I'm not asking you to," Sarab said. "But he doesn't need to tell anyone else. Vulcans are pragmatic people. If they think it will benefit them somehow, they can overlook many things."

Out of loyalty or irritation, Amanda started to contradict Sarab—but then she reconsidered.

He wasn't wrong. She'd seen that in practice more times than she cared to remember. For all the Vulcan talk of high ideals, at the end of the day, the practical needs of the many would always outweigh the needs of the few or the one—an inelegant solution when you were the _one_, but hard to argue with given the long view.

"I can't speak for Sarek," she said, and Sarab caught her eye for a moment and then nodded twice.

"But you can speak _to_ him," he said. "That's all I ask."

"Suppose I do and your petition is granted. What then? You said you were bred to be rulers. Do you really think your people would be content to be anything else? Frankly, I'm skeptical."

"Lady Amanda," Sarab said, leaning forward and peering at her with his too blue eyes, "we have no other choice."

"Of course you do," she countered. "There are always possibilities. If Earth doesn't accept your petition, there are many other people in the universe who might welcome your contributions. If you are serious about wanting to settle and raise families—"

Sitting back up suddenly, Sarab scowled.

"We would never dilute our humanity that way. Our ancestors believed in the possibility of human strength, human skill. Anything else would be a compromise of those ideals."

There it was, the proof she had been looking for—proof that she wasn't being unfair or harsh in her judgment. Proof that the Augments were, under their charisma and practiced civility, as xenophobic, as dangerously narcissistic and arrogant, as their ancestors.

The faint whine of a hoverbike motor—Sarek, certainly, racing home—and the deeper roar of a police cruiser shook the floor slightly. Amanda looked up and met Sarab's gaze.

"You'll help us, then?" Sarab said.

Amanda set her mug on the table, her hand shaking with anger, and she stood up as the sound of the hoverbike rumbled to a stop outside.

Suddenly Sarek was in the room, three armed Vulcans with him, Sarab quickly bundled out of the house, Amanda's silence telling him all he needed to know.

Days later, Sarek swayed the Vulcans to recommend against repatriation, and the humans on the Federation Council agreed. Notwithstanding their origins as Augments, the Traders' more recent history as suspected pirates and highwaymen meant reconciliation was problematic.

"I can't say I'm all that sorry," Amanda told Sarek. "Say what they might, Sarab and his crew are dangerous. They would never be able to live as ordinary citizens on Earth."

Sarek didn't necessarily disagree, but he argued that Sarab's information about the other Augments might have made the risk worth it.

"He said he knew about one sleeper ship with less than a hundred Augments onboard," Amanda said, trying to sound reasonable. "That's not exactly an army. If they do try to return to Earth, the patrols will stop them."

Her words were calculated to convince herself as much as Sarek, but it was many weeks before she could unlock the flitter without looking over her shoulder first.

Before Sarab's description of Spock as an Augment stopped rankling her.

Before she could remember that the Eugenics Wars had happened long ago: ancient history, a tragedy that didn't concern her or her family—and never would.

X X X X X X

"You think the ship in the news is the same one the Traders mentioned?" Cadet Uhura asks, her gaze so intense that Spock has trouble looking away. A rectangle of light from the window falls across her face, sketching her long eyelashes in sharp relief.

With a start, Spock realizes that she is waiting for an answer.

"Impossible to know," he says. "Though if it is, the Augments it carried have dispersed."

Cadet Uhura blinks slowly and shakes her head. As she does, her long ponytail slips forward over one shoulder, the filaments of her hair lighting up in the sunlight.

He's told her little beyond the official records—that twenty-two years ago the Traders approached the Vulcans for help in repatriation efforts, that the Vulcans declined the petition.

When he sketches out a few details about the attempted abduction of his mother, Cadet Uhura says, "Well, that strategy backfired!"

"It cast doubt on any benign motives the Traders may have had," Spock says. "Though my father maintains that the information the Traders had about other Augments would have been valuable intelligence."

"Some things aren't worth the price," she says, the heat in her voice surprising him. Tipping her chin up, she looks at him, frowning. "From what I've read, the Augments were engineered to be ruthless. They would never have integrated back into society on Earth."

"You suggest," Spock says, "that someone's genetic heritage is his—for lack of a better word—_destiny_."

He sees her eyes narrow—not in anger but in the kind of quicksilver casting around in her mind that makes her such an engaging student—signaling her willingness to examine her beliefs and either change them or defend them.

At this moment, she chooses to defend them.

"I'm not saying that's true for everyone," she says slowly, as if she is testing the strength of her words. "But the Augments were genetically engineered. They were _designed_."

The antipathy in her voice is unmistakable.

_Designed._

It's an accidental bruise, something she couldn't possibly know.

But her words make him feel lonelier than he has in a long time.

Leaning forward suddenly, he toggles off the computer monitor and she seems to recognize this for what he intends, a dismissal. As she lifts her backpack from the floor, he feels her watching him closely.

_Has he let his distress show? _

"Commander," she begins, "have I said—"

"Next time we need to focus on your use of the subjunctive," he says, not meeting her gaze. "You might want to review the causation rule before then."

He stands so that she has no choice but to do the same. As she hefts her backpack on her shoulder, she says, "I'm heading to the cafeteria for an early meal. Are you…I mean, would you care to join me?"

In another life, in an _imagined_ life, he would have accepted her offer, would have walked with her across the commons warmed by the late afternoon sunshine, would have followed her into the noisy cafeteria and selected a salad and sat with her at a long table surrounded by cadets who saw nothing unusual about two ordinary people sharing a meal, having a conversation, finding pleasure in each other's company.

In another life—

But he halts that thought.

"They were_ designed."_

His is no ordinary life, no _imagined_ life.

In another year Cadet Uhura will graduate—one of many gifted students, passing out of his view to a future she is even now conjuring up for herself.

Probably on a starship. Possibly on the _Enterprise._

In the meantime he will teach her Vulcan conjugations and correct her pronunciation as she practices reading news stories in translation.

Nothing more.

He pauses before he answers.

"Thank you for the offer," he says, meaning it. "But I am busy."

**A/N: The Augments are important lore in both TOS and **_**Enterprise**_**. In TOS, Khan Noonien Singh was the leader of the sleeper ship that Kirk and crew found in "Space Seed," setting in motion a chain of events that eventually resulted in Spock's death in **_**The Wrath of Khan.**_

**The Augments do serious mischief in **_**Enterprise**_** as well, notably in a three-episode story arc beginning with "Borderland."**

**This fic, of course, is set in the universe of the alternate time line—but I imagine that some things, such as the Eugenics Wars—happened more than once….unfortunately.  
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**When you leave a review, I know you are out there! Thanks for taking the time…it keeps me writing.**


	7. Lorelei

**Chapter Seven: Lorelei**

**Disclaimer: I did not create these characters and I do not profit from putting them through the ringer.**

**Tiny warning: This chapter skates along the edge of an M rating...if you squint. Nothing smutty...just suggestive.  
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He slips into the dream so gradually that for a moment he is caught up in its reality. One minute he is lying on his back in his bed, mentally reviewing his lecture for Monday, and the next he is standing on the wide marble steps in front of the language building.

The Academy commons stretches out before him—green and lush, crisscrossed with asphalt pathways, uniformed cadets walking purposefully or strolling or pausing to chat—and J. C. Ellison standing at the bottom of the steps, waving to someone.

That's when Spock knows that this is a dream. J. C. shipped out on the _Camden_ three weeks ago right as the fall term began. Spock has heard from him once—a short note thanking him again for what J. C. called "pulling strings" to get him aboard, though in reality sending a letter of recommendation to Admiral Nefting wasn't that unusual.

That J. C. appears in a dream isn't surprising. After all, since J. C.'s departure, Spock has thought about him often, especially now that Cadet Uhura has stepped in as Spock's teaching assistant. He hired her reluctantly—and has regretted doing so ever since—both consciously, and apparently subconsciously, too, if his dream is telling him something.

Not that she isn't a capable assistant. In fact, she far exceeds any aide he has ever had—exceptionally intelligent, a self-starter, persistent.

If only she weren't such a…distraction.

The noise, for instance. When she works at the small desk he has set up in the corner of his office, the sounds are unhinging—the squeak of her chair when she leans back, the rustle of her skirt when she shifts position, the click or her blunt nails on the keyboard, a slow exhalation suspiciously close to a sigh.

And then two days ago he upset her when she picked up a package for him from the campus post office. He recognized the handwriting immediately on the carefully wrapped box—his father's small, precise print—and had opened it while Cadet Uhura looked on.

To his astonishment, the package contained a family heirloom—his father's _ka'athrya,_ the Vulcan lute that had been in the family at least 300 years. Made of delicate _shirskah_ wood, the _ka'athyra_ could be damaged by the oils in a human touch—something Spock had learned when his father called him to account for leaving finger marks on the headstock.

When Cadet Uhura stretched out her hand to touch it, he had stopped her—and at that moment, he saw her expression fall and heard dismay in her voice.

Not just dismay, but the same sort of rejection he himself had felt when his father had chided him.

At the time he had not known what to say—and so he had said nothing. Since then, she has been unusually uncommunicative when she is in the office or the lab. Even when she works at her desk in his office, she holds herself under such a tight rein that he has to strain to hear her ordinary noises.

To his surprise, he realizes that her silence is even more of a distraction than the noise.

Here she is now in the dream, and that is not a surprise. From where he stands on the steps, Spock watches as she makes her way across the commons, one hand thrown up to return J. C.'s wave.

A memory, then, as much as a dream—the kiss he witnessed almost a year ago, forced to watch it again.

Spock dreams rarely, and when he does, they are usually lucid dreams where he is the author, in control, like someone on the side writing a story and watching it unfold.

Not this dream. Against his will he sees Cadet Uhura swaying forward, feels himself descending the steps. J. C. moves aside and disappears in the way that things come and go in dreams. Spock's heartbeat begins to race as Cadet Uhura—Nyota—lifts her gaze to his own.

If he stays here she will raise her face to his and kiss him—of that he's certain.

His heartbeat is so loud that it sounds in his ears.

A gulf seems to separate them as she makes her way across the commons—twenty meters, ten, and then she is so close that he inhales her particular scent—soap and lavender and the simple, clean starch of her uniform jacket, newly pressed.

The heat is oppressive, and with the part of his mind that knows this is a dream, he thinks how unlike any real San Francisco weather this is—almost brilliantly lit and so hot that his brow is sweaty.

Without a word she raises her hand to his face and lets one finger drift across his cheek. Her touch is cool and he leans into it, fevered, closing his eyes.

Her other hand cups his face briefly before sliding down his chest.

In the haze of the dream he tries to step back.

_This is wrong,_ he thinks. _This is unwanted_.

But if it is wrong, it is not unwanted—and with a start, he recognizes a truth he has tried to hide from for months.

Of their own accord, his arms slide around her and pull her close.

_How lithe she is, how cool and contained._

When he presses the small of her back with his thumb, she dips her head to his neck and exhales so slowly, so close to a moan, that he is instantly aroused, the heat from his brow washing down his neck and flooding his torso with an almost painful insistence.

He feels her leaning back and he opens his eyes and sees her tipping her head to watch him, her large dark eyes studying him, not with the sort of blatant curiosity that characterized too many of his early sexual experiences with humans, but like someone trying to look beneath the surface of who he appears to be.

That thought both excites and panics him—and in a rush he circles her again with his arm and pulls them together so tightly that he feels the buttons of her jacket on his chest, feels her knees pressing against his—and then parting, inviting him, his fingers twined in the material of her uniform, twitching it away, his heart throbbing so hard that he feels it in his throat, in his _lok_—

And then falling, tumbling—waking as he surrenders and explodes, gasping, the early morning light leaking around the window shades startling him.

For a minute he doesn't move—hot and sticky and entangled in the sheets.

_A dream,_ he tells himself, not so much to orient himself in time and space as to absolve himself of shame. _Who can be held accountable for a dream?_

Saturday morning. He has no classes today—indeed, he has nothing he has to do. Standing up, he pulls the corners of the sheets loose and gathers them into a pile. Then he strips out of his wet t-shirt and sleep pants and adds them to the sheets.

The washer and dryer are in a recessed closet in the hallway, and as Spock pads down the hall with the sheets in hand, he remembers another morning when he had done the same—sometime after his 15th birthday, his mother looking up from her morning tea with a knowing glance as he headed to the family washroom.

It was shortly after he had spent an afternoon with T'Pring and her family at their summer house in the L-Langon Mountains. The house was really more of a small cottage than anything else, but the K'Loh'r T'Mirs went there frequently during the hottest part of the summer to take advantage of the steady mountain breeze.

By then he and T'Pring had been bonded seven years—and he had no illusions that they were friends or were ever likely to be.

But T'Pring's company was pleasant enough, and on that particular afternoon she had seemed interested in showing him a pond ecosystem her father had installed behind the cottage.

"The pump is run by solar panels," she said, stepping to the edge of the sandy pond and running her hand along the small pump house. "On the sunniest days, we are able to lift twenty liters a minute from the well."

"What is the purpose of the pond?" Spock asked, and immediately he knew T'Pring was annoyed.

As she often was. Her anger continued to catch him off guard—though at some level he accepted that he was responsible. For whatever reason, his questions were inappropriate, or his actions didn't meet her expectations.

Now, for instance, she was offended, and he let his hands fall to his side, unsure how to proceed.

"You suggest that my father should not have made the pond," she said, her dark eyes narrowed, her upswept locks pinned back in a way that made her look older than he remembered.

"I suggested no such thing," he said, and again he sensed her anger, not just from watching her facial expression, but through the tentative bond.

When they weren't together, Spock struggled to feel T'Pring's presence. He had mentioned this casually not too long ago to his mother and had seen a flash of alarm in her eyes. Soon afterwards, these afternoon get-togethers with T'Pring and her family began.

So. His difficulty sensing her wasn't typical. His human heritage, undoubtedly.

"Just because you are unable to discern its purpose," T'Pring said, "doesn't mean it isn't clear."

It was intended as a hurtful riposte—and Spock would have accepted it as such if T'Pring hadn't turned so swiftly that she caught her toe in the sand. With a little huff of surprise, she tumbled over and landed in the shallow pond.

One stride forward and he was in the pond with her, pulling her to her feet. Before he let go of her hand he glanced at her closely, at her damp clothes and wounded dignity.

Through her fingertips he felt her embarrassment—and something else, too, that he couldn't name.

Curiosity? They hadn't seen each other much until recently, and both had changed a great deal since their last meeting.

T'Pring, for instance, had changed her shape—was, Spock decided, curvier than she used to be. How had he not noticed that before?

As T'Pring stepped out of the pond, Spock noted how her wet robe clung to her in a way that was…appealing? Yes, that, but he felt the same strange stirring he had felt earlier.

The rest of the afternoon was far less interesting—but that night he had a rare dream, of him and T'Pring back at the pond but this time embracing and stroking each other until he woke, soaked and surprised.

Sarek would have been the obvious source to ask for an explanation—but Spock resisted, worrying that his experience was more proof of his humanity and something unknown to Vulcans.

His research didn't yield much help, either. As matter-of-fact as Vulcans could be about every other aspect of their biology, about sexuality they were almost silent, assuming that what needed to be known would be passed down in hints and hushed stories.

Humans, on the other hand, wrote copiously about sexuality. Indeed, Spock often had trouble finding human music or literature or stories in popular culture that were _not_ centered around sex. He didn't have to look long to find his answers about his dream.

The one person he wanted to share it with was the one person he knew would be most likely to be disgusted by it—T'Pring herself. Did she have similar feelings about him? Had he ever wandered through her dreams?

It took him months before he got up the nerve to ask, and then longer still before he finally told her what he wanted to try.

To her credit, she heard him out before she responded. After all, young Vulcans often explored their sexuality before marriage, particularly with bond partners. There were no proscriptions against it, the way Spock knew some humans postponed sex.

T'Pring, however, seemed not so much upset as disinterested.

"If you insist," she said, "though I see little reason for it."

Later Spock would think of their coupling as more anti-climactic than disappointing. He had expected something different, something _more_, than what it turned out to be.

"A pleasant enough release," T'Pring said, describing her own perception. It was, Spock thought, an underwhelming commentary, though he couldn't disagree.

Was this all there was to it? Something merely physical, almost predictable? Didn't his parents feel something else, a connection that was emotional, mental, durable? Something that didn't drift away as soon as the act was completed?

For as long as he could remember, he had felt relieved about his bonding, even grateful that his parents had settled the matter and assured his future.

But now he began to feel resentful, too.

Not because he was disappointed with T'Pring sexually—or with sex in general—but because that disappointment seemed a portent of something else, of some larger, deeper failure.

When he left Vulcan for the Academy the separation was almost a relief. In the months leading up to his application to the Vulcan Science Academy, he and T'Pring had quarreled frequently and with increasing tension—and for a time after his departure they had not communicated at all.

Spock had been too busy to be concerned. His Academy coursework wasn't particularly challenging, but living among humans was a trial. His occasional explorations of human sexuality were just as fraught, and after several less than satisfactory experiences, he came to the conclusion that his own life was going to be different from what he had imagined or even desired.

So be it. Regrets were illogical.

That was, until Cadet Uhura.

In every way what he _feels_ is dangerous, wrong.

And what is even more troubling is his inability to _not_ feel, to control his emotions.

No amount of exercise, of meditation, of immersing himself in such long work hours that he falls into bed exhausted has given him any peace.

Perhaps this is what it is like to slip into _pon farr_? Somehow the stories of blood fever have a different tenor, a tone that doesn't quite resonate with what he is feeling.

Perhaps his experience of _pon farr_ will be different, tempered or changed by his humanity?

Possible, though that doesn't ring true either.

If he and his father had a different kind of relationship, he would ask him. The idea, however, is daunting, and as Spock steps into the shower, he dismisses it.

His mother, on the other hand, might be a more useful resource.

He needs to call her anyway, to ask why the _ka'athyra_ has been sent, and after his shower, after he eats the last carton of yogurt in the cooler, he turns on the portable subspace transceiver in his living area and settles in front of it while the call to Vulcan is relayed through Starbase Four.

Amanda's surprise and delight at hearing from Spock is obvious—and with a pang, he resolves to call her more often.

"You aren't ill, are you?" she asks, pulling her robe around her shoulders. "You look flushed."

"I am well, Mother," he says hurriedly. "I called because I received father's _ka'athyra _in the mail this week."

"He told me he had decided to send it. He hardly has time to play it anymore."

"But I have the one you gave me," Spock says, not hiding his confusion.

At that his mother takes a breath and lets it out slowly.

"I suppose," she says, "we should tell you."

His heart suddenly racing, Spock leans closer to the subspace monitor.

"There's something wrong with your father's heart," his mother says, her shoulders sagging forward. "I don't know how serious it is," she says, answering his unspoken question. "The healers want to try some medications first before resorting to surgery. We're hopeful—though I think Sarek is having some intimations of mortality."

"The _ka'athyra_."

"Yes," Amanda says. "He wants to make sure you have it, in case—"

Her words drift off and she blinks and looks away for a moment.

"Mother, I—"

As soon as he begins to speak, he isn't sure what he wants to say. To reassure her? He knows nothing about his father's situation and any reassurance would be based on speculation rather than facts.

To offer to come home? He's long overdue for a visit, but the beginning of the new semester is a difficult time to get away. His father will understand that, if his mother doesn't.

To ask her advice about what it means that he is having trouble focusing, that his resolve is being sabotaged by feelings he cannot control? That he is living in a miserable limbo that he doesn't understand?

He falters now as he watches his mother's face, realizes that she has tried to spare him from her own worries about his father.

"I'm going to be on Earth next week," she says suddenly, and he sits up in surprise. "But in Paris at the Federation Conference. I don't know if I can get to your neck of the woods."

She tells him that she's traveling with the Vulcan delegation in Sarek's place—that against his will and after much arm twisting by his healers, Sarek is taking sick leave to rest and let the new heart medications work.

"It's ridiculous, I know," his mother says with a rueful smile. "I'm not an ambassador, but your father has bent my ear so long about his plans for the subcommittee meetings that it's just easier for me to go and help set things up. Stoval will be the official in charge, of course, but he doesn't know all the committee members and I do."

"My mother, the ambassador," Spock says drily, and his mother rewards him with a laugh. "They ought to go ahead and deputize you."

"Oh, no," Amanda says. "They tried that once before. I wanted no part of it!"

Spock feels his eyebrows rise into his bangs.

"You were offered a position in the embassy?"

"Haven't I told you that story?" she says, and Spock is relieved that his mother's mood is lifting. "Well, maybe one day I will."

"I am not busy right now," Spock says. "Indeed, I have nothing at all on my schedule."

X X X X X X X

"You're going to get killed on that hoverbike one day," Amanda said as Sarek pulled a spanner from his toolbox and made some adjustments to the intake valve. He glanced up at her and gave her a look that made her laugh.

"I trust that your powers of prediction are faulty," he said, making her laugh again.

Picking up another tool, he eyed the engine of the hoverbike and tapped on it experimentally. Amanda gave an exaggerated sigh and ran her hands over her bulging midriff.

"If you're going to tinker out here all morning," she said, "I'm going to take a nap."

She could feel Sarek's eyes following her as she made her way carefully to the front door.

Seven months pregnant, she was often tired—and the healers expected the pregnancy to last longer than a normal human gestation. More than the ordinary weight gain and realignment of bones and ligaments that made every pregnant woman feel off-balance and weary, the regular chelation therapy to filter the baby's errant copper blood cells from her own circulation meant Amanda needed more sleep than usual—and more calories.

"I feel like a beached whale," she complained more than once when Sarek brought her a meal while she lay in the bed or stretched out on the sofa.

To his credit, Sarek never complained. On the contrary, Amanda never felt more cared for, more cherished, than she did as she made her way inexorably through the long months of her pregnancy.

"I have to go in to the office," Sarek called out as she headed into the cool of the foyer, "but I will be back in plenty of time to take you to the appointment."

Without turning around she lifted her hand in acknowledgment. She was both glad to have Sarek with her during her visits to the healer and aware that his presence was unusual. The first time they had appeared together for a regular appointment, the healer had lost her composure briefly, her eyes broadcasting her surprise.

"Ambassador," the healer said, her tone unmistakably disapproving, "your attendance is not necessary."

The healer, a woman not much older than Sarek, her dark, upswept hair covered by a heavy veil, glanced briefly at Amanda. To her dismay, Amanda felt her face flush.

"Nevertheless," Sarek said evenly, "it is desired."

He waited a beat before adding, "By both of us."

There it was, Sarek's hard-earned attention to her needs—his willingness to break Vulcan tradition when she needed human understanding—and to put Vulcans on notice that it was his choice to do so.

As she made her way to the bedroom, Amanda heard the engine of the hoverbike turn over and catch. Stretching out across the bed, she noticed the bike revving and then shifting gears, and Sarek was off.

In the gloom of the bedroom, Amanda closed her eyes and slowed her breathing. At once the baby kicked her so hard that she pressed her hand to her belly and curled over to her side. The kicking stopped and Amanda tried to center herself the way the healer had suggested, reaching out to her son.

Vulcan mothers, she knew, developed a telepathic connection to their unborn children—though the healer had been uncertain that Amanda would be able to.

"Are you aware of his consciousness in your own?" the healer asked her shortly after she began to feel the baby move several months ago, and she had to admit that she didn't. Not the way she recognized Sarek's thoughts—or sensed his moods or his activities when they were apart.

The healer made a notation in her log and Amanda felt judged.

It was her sister Cecilia who reassured her. During her pediatric residency, Cecilia did a rotation in a Vulcan ward where one of the healers told her that strong telepaths were sometimes silent in the womb—an interesting idea that Cecilia passed on to her sister during a regular subspace conversation.

"Or maybe there's something wrong with me," Amanda said sourly.

"Well, we know that's true," Cecilia said, laughing, and despite herself, Amanda smiled. "Besides, the healer I talked to said that those weird dreams you've been having could be evidence of a telepathic connection."

"Or not," Amanda said. "Plenty of human mothers report having weird pregnancy dreams."

"I'm hanging up now," Cecilia said. "Call me later when you get out of this snit."

As she lay in the dark bedroom, Amanda sent out a tendril of attention into her thoughts, searching. There was Sarek, preoccupied with his hoverbike—_the intake valve was still misaligned_, he was thinking as he evaluated the engine noise.

She cast about for the baby—any hint that he was there, that he was, at some elementary level, aware, bonded to her.

Nothing.

She ran her hand over the taut skin of her middle and sighed.

What if she never developed that bond? How would that handicap a Vulcan child? She and Sarek had chosen a Vulcan phenotype for their son—had agreed that he should appear Vulcan, would be raised as a Vulcan.

But would he _be_ Vulcan?

The baby kicked again so hard that Amanda gasped.

She sat up in the bed, her heart suddenly racing. Something was wrong.

Instinctively she sought out Sarek—and that's when she realized that he was gone.

His voice in her mind was silent, his presence dark—as if he had left her in a room alone, turning off the lights behind him.

With an effort, she pulled herself up and grabbed the personal comm on the bedside table. If Sarek's secretary was surprised to hear from her, she didn't let it show. Instead, her voice was a maddening contrast to Amanda's worried tone.

"When he arrives, tell him to call me at once," Amanda said, hearing how odd the request sounded. Why couldn't she simply communicate the thought to him directly? The secretary would, no doubt, assume she was being hysterical, the overly emotional human most Vulcans expected her to be.

When she hung up she considered calling the healer—perhaps the unexpected silence was an artifact of the pregnancy?

But something stayed her hand.

In the kitchen she poured herself some _kasa_ juice and paced, the fingers of one hand rubbing an ache in her lower back. If he didn't call in ten minutes, she would…_what would she do?_ _Call the secretary back?_ That was…illogical. Why ask her for the same thing twice? A Vulcan would take such a request as an insult, a commentary about memory.

She could alert the authorities—but again she hesitated. Perhaps Sarek was so busy with something that he had let their link go dark? If she had a close Vulcan friend she could ask—_has this ever happened to you?_

That she didn't have anyone to ask felt like a tremendous oversight at that moment.

She tried to lie down but was up again in a few minutes, restless, walking back and forth between the front door and the kitchen where she made a cup of tea but left it cooling, unsipped, on the table.

The baby, too, seemed restless, and when Amanda sat for any length of time, she felt the odd slide and twirl of fetal gymnastics.

"This is silly," she said at last, grabbing her coat from the hall closet and heading out to the flitter. Her plan was simple—she would trace Sarek's journey from the house to his office, keeping an eye out for his hoverbike—likely broken-down beside the road, his mind too preoccupied with repairing it to notice Amanda's absence from his thoughts.

The explanation was clear, obvious, and she comforted herself with an imagined scene—herself pulling up in the flitter, Sarek's relief palpable as he hefted the broken bike into the boot.

She was so convinced that she would find him that she was startled when she arrived at the embassy empty-handed.

"Lady Amanda," Sarek's secretary said, her voice betraying the slightest hint of surprise. "The Ambassador has not yet arrived."

At that Amanda felt the first real panic. Something had obviously happened to him on the way—an accident, an abduction?

"Call security," Amanda said, but Sarek's secretary met her gaze evenly and said, "And what should I tell them? That the Ambassador is late for work?"

"He's hurt," Amanda said, suddenly sure. "Something's happened to him. He would be here by now otherwise."

"Perhaps he changed his mind," the secretary said, "or took a detour?" Amanda shook her head.

"No! I can't…_feel_…him."

She knew that Vulcans didn't describe the sensation of being bonded with each other as a _feeling_—and indeed, the word didn't come close to expressing the awareness she had of Sarek—his personality and perceptions and _presence_ always in her thoughts, always part of who she was.

"He is blocking you," the secretary said matter-of-factly, with a hint of smugness, and Amanda felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle.

"He wouldn't do that," she said.

At least he never had before. Could it be true, that Sarek had tamped down their connection deliberately? And for what reason?

She rejected that idea.

She looked closely at the secretary sitting primly at the desk. Is that what other couples did? Blocked each other? Hid things?

This new bit of information rattled her.

"Perhaps you should return to your home and rest," the secretary said, not unkindly.

"But I'm sure—" she began, and the secretary said, "When the Ambassador arrives, he will contact you."

Even though the secretary's face was impassive, Amanda had lived long enough on Vulcan to read the skepticism in her eyes. The secretary did not believe her, did not seem to accept that Amanda's bond with Sarek was authentic.

The police would be equally skeptical.

Amanda felt her face go hot with anger.

On the ride back home she replayed the scene several times, each time amending what she had really said with far wittier rejoinders. The first thing she would do when Sarek got home was to give him an earful about his secretary—

As she pulled up to the house, she was disappointed that his hoverbike wasn't there. She had half-expected to see him waiting for her with some reasonable explanation.

When he wasn't home by the time she needed to leave for the medical appointment, she called the healer and canceled it. An hour later, she called the local police and reported him missing. As she expected, the authorities dismissed her concern.

"Are you telling me that people can just go missing and you won't bother to look for them?" she said into the comm, hoping her ire was obvious.

"You saw the Ambassador less than six hours ago," the call clerk said. "No reasonable person would label that missing."

It was a calculated insult but Amanda was too upset already to hear it.

"But his silence! It was sudden—"

"If the Ambassador does not contact you by this time tomorrow, call again."

And just like that, the comm line went dead.

Amanda's head was swimming. _Food—and rest._ She needed both—the baby needed both. But the leftover grains she tried to eat were like sawdust in her mouth, and after choking on a mouthful, she gave up.

She lay down on the sofa in the front room where she could see the flitter pad from the window. With an effort she slowed her breathing and tried to relax. A patch of late afternoon sun fell across her feet, warming her, and she closed her eyes.

She slipped into the dream so gradually that for a moment she was caught up in its reality. One minute she was lying on her back on the sofa, listening to the ambient noises of the house—a drop of water escaping a leaky faucet in kitchen, the whir of the attic air exchanger—and the next she was struggling to keep her footing on a sandy incline.

Looking up, she saw that she was in the desert near her house—the distinctive rock formations to the south clearly in view. The wind soughed loudly behind her and she turned to see a loose plant like an Earth tumbleweed cartwheel across the sand.

The place looked both familiar and new, like a room turned upside down or lit from a different angle.

_I'm dreaming,_ she thought, understanding why everything looked so odd. She felt ill-at-ease, as if someone was watching her, and she turned around, expecting to see someone there.

Instead she saw a jumble of boulders the color of soot and a darker pit behind them. As if she were being tugged by a magnet, she took a hesitant step toward the dark boulders.

_Amanda!_

Sarek's voice!

She woke with a start. The patch of late sunlight had moved and faded. Outside in the twilight she saw the flitter parked on the pad but the hoverbike was not there.

A call to Sarek's co-worker Stoval yielded no information.

"Lady Amanda," Stoval said with his characteristic soft lisp, "it is too early to be concerned. The Ambassador has an important trade meeting with some merchants from Kir. He may have decided to travel there instead."

"Yes, but—" Amanda began, but she let her voice trail off. _Yes, but Kir was 400 kilometers away. Sarek wouldn't have left without telling her where he was going_, she could have said.

Other Vulcans she knew would have left without hesitation, without informing anyone, if it suited their purpose to do so. Their families would not have worried, would not have thought it unusual, would not now be making a fuss.

"If you hear from him—" she said, and Stoval said, "I will have him communicate with you."

She lay down then, cradling her arms around her stomach as she curled in the middle of the bed.

"Oh, baby," she said, feeling a heel or an elbow rolling under her palm. "Where is your father?"

Blinking back tears, she searched for any sense of Sarek at all—a tiny spark, a ghost of a hint, that he was still tied to her. Under her hand the baby grew still, as if he was listening with her.

That night she slept fitfully, starting at the sound of every flitter making its way past the house. In the morning she was bleary eyed and stumbling with exhaustion—but as she forced herself to drink some tea, a vision came to her so clearly that her hand shook.

The dark rocks. The sandy outcropping.

The same as in the dream, except rosy with morning sunlight.

Not a dream but a reality.

Standing up so quickly that she knocked the wooden chair over, she hurried to the door and out to the flitter. She knew where Sarek was—or knew how to find where he was.

Just as she had the day before, she aimed the flitter toward town and flew slowly, scanning for any sign of the hoverbike or Sarek. Just as the day before, she saw no sign of either.

For a kilometer she flew over desert terrain that surrounded her house. When the first small buildings on the outskirt of the city came into view, she turned the flitter around and headed in the other direction. This time instead of looking for the hoverbike she kept out an eye for the boulders of her dream.

She was almost all the way back home when an outcropping of dark stone caught her attention. Not the boulders she had seen—not exactly—but something drew her closer.

Carefully she banked the flitter off the roadway and headed closer to the rocks. Slowing the flitter until the engine began to sputter, she flew so low that she heard the scrape of low bushes.

She was almost all the way around the outcropping when she saw it—the same arrangement of boulders, the darker shadow behind them. Setting the flitter down in the sand, she picked her away across a rocky field.

And hidden behind the thick shrubbery was the hoverbike, the front deflector torn back, the steering bar bent and half-buried in the sand.

Sarek, however, was nowhere to be seen.

"I'm here!" she called out, moving as quickly as she could toward the boulders. From this distance Amanda could see that what had looked like a dark shadow was a shallow indentation in the sand, partly protected from the sun.

In a flash she knew Sarek would be there.

And he was—bruised and sunburned and dehydrated and unconscious.

For the first few hours after he was taken to the medical center in Shi'Kahr, Amanda sat at his bedside and kept her fingers twined with his, indifferent to the occasional pointed looks she received from the healers as they moved in and out of the room. She wanted to know as soon as he was awake—to feel his presence through her touch and in her mind.

As the day wore on most of the embassy staff stopped by—Stoval first, and Sarek's secretary, both having the good grace to look abashed. Stoval actually came close to apologizing to Amanda for not believing her—but she was so tired that she could only nod.

Someone—perhaps even the healer who had looked at her askance earlier—covered her shoulders with a blanket when she fell asleep at last, scrunched awkwardly in the chair she had pulled next to Sarek's bed.

Hours later she woke with a gasp. Sarek was looking at her, his eyelids puffy with sunburn, a cut across his brow turning a dusky shade of green.

A flood of warmth cascaded through Amanda so fiercely that she shivered.

_You're back_, she thought, and she felt the tenderness of his reply as much as she heard it.

_Because of you,_ he said.

The next three days were a blur—fluid therapy, a broken tibia set, a skin graft behind his ear where the sunburn had done too much damage to repair easily.

And complicating his recovery was Sarek's insistence that he could work from his hospital bed—until the healers forbade him from using his comm and threatened to ban any of his embassy co-workers from visiting.

"Your recovery will proceed more quickly if you rest," the healer said in Amanda's hearing, and she raised an eyebrow at her husband and said, "I told you so."

"But the trade delegation from Kir is already on the way here," he said. "The documents they need are in the study at home. I need to get them and—"

"You don't need to do anything but what your doctor tells you," Amanda said. "I'll get the trade papers and take them to your office."

That first chore led to a second one, and then a third, with Amanda scurrying between the medical center and the embassy, meeting with the merchants from Kir and relaying Sarek's instructions to them. When suppertime came she offered to show them to a local eatery. When it was time to retire for the night, she gave them directions to a family-run hostel and promised to meet them in the morning with further details about the negotiations.

By the end of the week Sarek was able to put weight on his broken leg and the healers reluctantly agreed to let him go home if he promised to stay immobile a few more days.

"Do as your healer recommends," Stoval told him. "The Lady Amanda is a more than adequate substitute in your absence. The Director has suggested that we make her an adjunct to the department. That way she can sign the legal documents rather than ferry them back and forth to you."

"No, thank you," Amanda said when Sarek relayed the offer. "As soon as you are back on your feet, I'm getting off mine. I have a feeling I'm not going to be getting much rest once this baby is born."

X X X X X X X

"I was right, too," Amanda says, laughing. "You were a lot of work."

Spock isn't sure how to respond. His mother's laughter is at odds with her words. _A joke._

On the subspace screen he sees her smile fade and she is serious again.

"What do you hear from T'Pring?"

The question is so unanticipated that he blinks.

"I have heard nothing from her," he says uneasily. In fact, he has tried to contact T'Pring twice in the past few months, each time unsuccessfully. "Why do you ask?"

"She left a message on the house comm a few days ago," Amanda says, frowning. "She said she needed to talk to you."

T'Pring's calling his house could mean nothing—or everything. On one hand, she could simply be returning his messages, though if she had wanted to talk to him directly, she could have called him instead of leaving a message at his parents' house.

On the other hand, she may be feeling the same grinding loneliness that has characterized his past year—may be feeling _his_ loneliness through their bond, the way his parents are atuned to each other's moods.

If so, that connection is a surprise, and new—maybe even something T'Pring does not welcome.

He lets his confusion show on his face and his mother is quick to notice.

"What's wrong?" she asks. "Is something going on between the two of you?"

With a shake of his head, Spock says, "Uncertain. I have been…_unsettled_…lately."

The dream from the morning flashes through his mind and he flushes_. Of course_. The troubling longing he feels when he is around Cadet Uhura—the unwanted thoughts that interrupt his meditation, that drift into his careful routine…_his long separation from T'Pring is the reason._ Why hadn't he seen it before?

He feels something akin to relief. His professional life isn't coming unwoven. He isn't losing his control.

He simply needs to attend to his personal life—to follow that thread of connection back to T'Pring and steady himself again.

At the mid-term, then, he will make a trip home to check on his father and talk to T'Pring.

_More than talk._ He flushes at the idea that sexual frustration is at the bottom of his recent distress. How…human.

The call to his mother leaves him strangely lightheaded, like someone waking up free from a long-standing headache, newly energized. Needing something to do, he packs some student work in his satchel and heads across the commons to his office. If he's lucky, he can finish his grading and revisit his planned lecture notes for Monday—something he had started doing when he fell asleep that morning.

_Before the dream._

Setting that memory aside, he hurries into the language building and takes the stairs two at a time to the third floor. Rounding the top of the stairwell, he sees a light on at the end of the hall. Not an emergency light or a hall sconce but a light coming from his office.

He knows at once that Cadet Uhura is there. No one else has a key to his office.

He stands transfixed, unsure whether to continue or retreat.

And then he hears a sound—a wordless, tuneless humming that pierces him like a hook below his navel. He moves forward against his will.

She jumps when he steps into the doorway.

"Commander! You scared me!"

"That was not my intention," he says, setting his satchel on his desk. From the corner of his eye he sees that she has several PADDs and a paper notebook strewn on the little desk where she works. She's been here for some time, then.

She starts to stand up and he waves her back.

"I, well, I needed to get some studying done," she says, looking down at her open backpack on the floor, "and my roommate is sleeping in this morning, and the library isn't open yet—I'm so sorry! I didn't think you would be in today."

"That was not my intention either," he says, watching her closely, hoping his repetition is amusing, wanting to lighten the heaviness that has settled between them. He adds, "I seem to be doing many things unintentionally lately."

He means it as an apology for hurting her feelings when she asked to touch the _ka'athyra_, but at once he realizes his mistake. The words hover in the air between them, suggestive.

Cadet Uhura frowns and nods her head slowly.

"I see," she says, her eyes on his.

And suddenly he sees, too—that T'Pring is not the reason for his misery.

What a foolish hope that was.

"Please," he says, sitting in his chair, motioning toward the pile of work on the little desk in the corner. "Don't let me disturb you."

"I won't bother you?" she asks, and he tells her no, that he'll hardly know she's here.

A smile brightens her face and she turns around, the squeak of her chair, the rustle of her skirt, the sound of her breathing like some siren song, pulling him onto the rocks.

**A/N: The scene where Sarek sends Spock the _ka'athyra_ is Chapter One of "What We Think We Know."**

**"Lorelei" is both a dangerous rock in the Rhine and a mythical woman who unwittingly distracted sailors, causing their doom.**

**Here's the funny thing about chapters that skate close to M ratings: they draw the most readers and the fewest reviewers! My guess is that as much as we enjoy reading stuff with an edge, we are shy about letting anyone know...**

**Don't be shy! Reviews are the only way fanfiction authors know they are being read. Did you like this chapter or found it too much? Let me know! You literally keep me writing.**


	8. Touch

**Chapter Eight: Touch**

**Disclaimer: As much as it pains me to say it, these characters aren't mine and I make no money from writing about them.  
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As soon as he steps onto the hover bus, Spock realizes he has made a mistake. Instead of the usual thin crowd this time of the morning, the bus is full—_more_ than full, every seat taken, a few people standing awkwardly in the aisle.

In the three seconds before the door shuts behind him, he considers turning around and waiting for the next bus. There's no guarantee that it will be less crowded, however. In fact, the odds are high that all of the buses today will be crowded; indeed, that all of the public transport will be crowded for the foreseeable future until the damage from the recent earthquake has been repaired and the transportation hubs are back to full capacity.

He should have foreseen this. If he were thinking clearly, he would have.

The tremor in San Francisco last week had been relatively mild, but it disrupted the power lines and a gas transfer conduit that ran under the Academy commons, detouring cross campus foot traffic. Otherwise Spock would have walked to his office from the faculty housing the way he normally does.

If he exits the bus now, he won't get to the language building for at least 37 minutes, ten minutes after Cadet Uhura is scheduled to open the lab. Repressing a sigh, he presses down the aisle of the bus, careful to hold his arms closely to his side, bracing himself when the doors hiss shut and the bus judders forward.

From the corner of his eye he sees the woman in the seat to his right looking up at him with undisguised attention. As long as he's been on Earth, Spock is still uneasy with the unwanted scrutiny he draws—stares, both surreptitious and oblique, and comments muttered in passing. Or worse, questions asked of him directly—well-meaning, most of the time, though Spock often thinks of his mother when he's approached that way.

"Put yourself in their place," she's told him more than once. "They're curious. Surely you can appreciate how that feels."

She's right, of course. Of the Federation founding members, Vulcans are the most underrepresented in Starfleet. Except for embassy staff, business owners, and scientific researchers, few Vulcans spend much time on Earth. Any Vulcan at all, much less one in a Starfleet uniform, is a rarity.

Still. On this morning he has no wish to indulge anyone's prurient interest. Deliberately turning his face away from the woman to his right, he watches the scenery hurtling past the window.

To his surprise, the earthquake damage is more extensive than the holovids have led him to believe. When the earthquake struck, he had been on Vulcan—a hurried trip during the Academy break—and he didn't return until late last night. How odd that he hadn't noticed the cracked sidewalks, the inoperative street lights, the store signs tumbled off their hinges. The lateness of the hour when he arrived, no doubt, was the reason—and the fact that he had been preoccupied on the short shuttle hop from the transport station to his apartment with a comm call to Cadet Uhura—_Nyota_—to let her know he was back safely.

And if he is honest, to hear her voice.

His trip to Vulcan had been so sudden, so unplanned, that he had told no one that he was leaving—a misstep, apparently. When communications were inoperative after the quake, Nyota had spent several days concerned for his safety, unaware that he wasn't in San Francisco. When he finally called her from his parents' house, she had been angry.

No. Furious.

"_The worst part was not knowing where you were, or if you were hurt_. _You should have told me that you were going to Vulcan. Then I wouldn't have worried."_

Spock had tried to reason with her. _"If I had been on Earth, we would have been out of communication because of the power failure, and you still would not have known where I was or if I were hurt. I fail to see how my being on Vulcan—"_

"_I would have known you were okay, but instead I spent several miserable days imagining you hurt somewhere, in a hospital, unable to speak—" _ Even over the static of the subspace he could hear the distress in her tone. _"Please don't do that again. I need to know….if you are safe."_

As astonishing as her words were, the ones left unspoken were even more so.

He needs time to consider what to do about them.

In one way his life is less complicated than before. With a healer's help, he and T'Pring are no longer bonded, a choice they had been moving toward for quite some time.

Or so he had assumed.

But T'Pring's anger when his father arranged the annulment two days ago caught Spock off guard. He had expected her to be as relieved as he feels. As _free._

And there it is at last, the word he means.

T'Pring is free to pursue a relationship with Stonn, one Spock suspects they have already begun.

And he himself is _free_—

He's free from the weight of TPring in his mind, like sand in his bed or a splinter in his hand.

Free _from_.

Not free _to_.

The bus lurches to a stop and several more people come on, forcing him further down the aisle. A young woman standing behind him sways suddenly but he steadies her elbow with his hand and she grabs the rail as the bus begins again.

Although she looks nothing like Nyota—the woman on the bus is short and stocky and with bright pink and orange hair—when Spock touches her and keeps her from falling, he remembers a day not too long ago in his office when Nyota stood up and tumbled forward, her recently injured ankle giving way.

As he had caught Nyota around the waist with one hand and cradled her elbow with his other, an electricity leaped between them—and he knew that his unshielded emotions revealed a contradiction of restraint and desire, affection and uneasiness, and underneath it all, an astonishment that he still isn't sure was his own or hers.

Neither has said anything about it. Or maybe they have, though not with words.

He needs time to think about that, too.

The bus tilts to the left so hard that a shopping bag in the overhead grate flops over, scattering the contents. A few passengers titter uneasily.

Spock glances out the window. Market Street—only halfway to the gate nearest the language building. Perhaps he should have walked after all.

And then it happens. Thirty feet above the street, the bus gives a violent shimmy and people scream. Reaching for the handrails, Spock fights to keep his footing and succeeds, barely.

For a sickening moment the bus rocks from side to side, and then with a mechanical whine, plunges down into the crowded street below.

Glass and metal shards fly everywhere. The bus groans and buckles and rolls over on its side like a tired dog. People are tossed into heaps like bloody rags.

He isn't certain how long he is unconscious, but when he comes to, Spock is pinned against a broken bus seat, his left wrist bent in an unnatural position. Every breath is a struggle, the acrid smoke scorching his lungs. Lying on top of him, several passengers keep him pressed to the ground.

In the distance he hears a siren and he beats back his panic with the reassurance that help is on the way. A sharp pain in his ribs makes him gasp. He slips once more into oblivion.

When he comes to again he is in the medical center, too weary to open his eyes.

He feels a cold, metallic pressure on his chest and hears someone saying, "I think he's dead."

The cold drifts to his side and a rougher voice says, "His heart's here. Don't you know anything about Vulcans?"

He's too tired to be alarmed. And in too much pain. His control is completely shattered, the edges of his consciousness as ragged as an old piece of cloth.

Dimly he senses his mother's distress through their bond. A stronger presence is his father, hovering in the recesses of Spock's thoughts.

That they are aware of the accident isn't surprising. What is more surprising is his cousin Chris. Why is he here at the hospital, his voice low and breathy, as if they are children again sharing telepathic images in the touch of a fingertip? Mailman, his cousin Rachel called it.

And there, Chris' attempt to send him a message through his palm, the coverlet tugged away, the air cold and damp and unpleasant on Spock's hand, on his arm.

The pain replaced by intense nausea—his head swimming at the slightest motion.

The medications, surely, fogging his brain. Wandering through the haze like someone lost in a swamp, ponderous and slow. A light growing brighter ahead, and then Nyota appearing from the mist, her hand outstretched, her fingers drifting across his own.

_I need to know…if you are safe,_ she says—the same words she had scolded him with when he called her from Vulcan.

"Nyota," he says, opening his eyes, struggling to keep them open, failing.

"He's overmedicated!" he hears Nyota say.

_Yes. Please. Stop. _

His gratitude at being understood, and then finally, his father's voice, telling him to rest.

_You need to heal,_ his father says, and Spock sinks into the timbre and certitude of his father's words. He needs to heal. He needs to let himself slip into the necessary trance but something holds him back.

_Help me,_ he says, and he feels his father's strength of will surrounding him.

_Attend to what I say, _Sarek says, and like a small child, Spock lets go of his pain at last and waits to see where his father will lead him.

X X X X X X

The year that Spock turned 12, Sarek came so close to striking him out of anger that he wished he had studied _kolinahr_ more seriously in his youth. The utter lack of emotion aspired to by its practitioners would have served him well in dealing with his younger son.

In retrospect he couldn't pinpoint the origins of the undercurrent of growing discontent and, yes, why not admit it, at least to himself, disappointment that he felt about his relationship with Spock. All he knew was that when he thought of Spock at 12, he called up a series of moments so fraught with anger that even now they make his heart race and his hands shake.

The first one involved what Sarek had assumed was an act of carelessness or easy vandalism that might have been overlooked if Amanda hadn't noticed an uptick in their garden water use one month.

As soon as Sarek checked the rain gauge, he knew that Spock was responsible. Before the evening meal, he called him into his study.

"Explain," Sarek said, holding up the broken gauge. He settled back in his chair at the desk and waited for Spock to answer. From the other side of the desk, Spock stood with his chin tucked down.

"I needed it."

A deliberately evasive answer, short on the required details. Sarek set the rain gauge aside.

"Elaborate," he said more forcefully.

"I _needed _it," Spock said, looking up, "for an experiment."

At once Sarek flushed. Spock's repetition was a calculated insult. His tone bordered on insolent.

At 12 Spock had not yet hit the growth spurt that would hint at his eventual adult height. His face still had traces of what Amanda called _baby fat_. Nevertheless, Sarek found himself reacting in anger, as if a reasonable, rational person and not a child were mocking him.

In one corner of his mind he felt Amanda stirring, alerted to his mood. In a moment he heard the door to the study open as she walked in. Spock flicked his eyes toward her before looking down at the floor.

Slowing his breathing, Sarek said, "Are you aware that your mother requires the gauge to set the garden sprinklers properly?"

Spock met Sarek's gaze and nodded. Behind him, Sarek heard Amanda let out a breath. At the same time, he felt her irritation and realized that she was holding back her own impulse to chastise their son.

"Then _explain_," Sarek said, emphasizing the word, "to your mother and me why you appropriated an object that does not belong to you, which the family requires, for which you asked no permission, and used it for your own purposes."

Even in the late afternoon gloom of the study, Sarek could see from Spock's expression that he was considering how to answer. _Good. He needs to learn to reflect before speaking_.

Or before acting. The scuffle last week at school—letting himself be provoked into violence—

Sarek's face heated up at the memory of the call from the headmaster telling him to fetch his son.

Now Spock stood mute, his expression a confusing mixture of anger and anguish.

"Answer me," Sarek said, but Spock said nothing.

"Spock." Amanda took a step forward, her hands out like a supplicant. "What's going on? Why won't you answer us?"

Her frustration echoed his own. Why indeed?

That Spock was so recalcitrant at times, that he kept his thoughts partitioned from his parents with a vigilance Sarek found unsettling should no longer be surprising. For as long as Sarek could remember, Spock had been this way—private to a fault, and more than that—willful, excessively so.

If Sybok weren't as willful in his own way, Sarek would have been tempted to look to Spock's humanity as a reason for his strong-jawed stubbornness.

But as Amanda pointed out long ago, Sarek himself was the common denominator, the author of their genes _and_ their environment. Either way, he could look to no one else to blame.

"I did not break it," Spock said at last, glancing at the rain gauge on the desk.

Not disguising his skepticism, Sarek said, "You deny you are responsible?"

"I have improved it," Spock said. The note of defiance in his voice was provocative.

"What are you saying?" Amanda said, stepping closer to the desk. Sarek picked up the gauge and held it up. The automatic drain had been jimmied open and soldered back. The fill line was partly obscured by a thin metal loop on the narrow end, and what Sarek had at first thought was a broken debris screen was, on closer inspection, a small solar cell.

"What is this?" he said, looking up. Spock was watching him closely, his dark brown eyes so like Amanda's that Sarek felt a catch in his throat.

Spock held his hand out, palm up, and Sarek realized with a start that he was asking for the gauge. No, not _asking. Demanding_. Through their bond he felt Amanda's amusement and he sent back a trickle of irritation.

_We shouldn't indulge him_, he thought.

"This," Spock said, pointing to the metal hoop on the gauge's narrow end, "is a magnetic resonator. It links the water molecules together and prevents them from escaping through here. That is, as long as there is a power source. That is why I have attached a solar cell."

He tipped the gauge toward Amanda, making her his sole audience. Sarek recognized the deliberate slight but said nothing.

"This chip," Spock said, thumbing a small metal disk on the side of the gauge, "sends the water level readings to the computer each night and opens the gauge to drain. I have programmed the gauge to turn on the sprinklers when the water level falls below the monthly average for five days in a row. Now you will not have to reset the gauge by hand or turn on the sprinklers."

His tone was an odd mixture of triumph and grievance. It infuriated Sarek.

Amanda, on the other hand, blurted out, "Well done!"

"Except," Sarek said sourly, "that does not explain why the water use is higher than it should be."

Spock's expression fell immediately.

"The magnetic resonator fails 22% of the time," he said, darting a glance at Sarek. "The sprinklers come on because the level readings are artificially low."

Despite himself, Sarek had to admit that Spock's idea was sound, even if his actual execution was faulty. For a moment he was silent.

"The solar cell is inadequate," he decided. "Replace this with a larger one and try again."

It was as close to an apology as he was able to offer. He saw comprehension in Spock's eyes as he nodded to his mother and left the study.

"He was only trying to help," Amanda said from behind his chair, letting her hand slip to his shoulder. "Don't be so hard on him."

"He should have asked permission," Sarek said. "Or at the very least, he could have asked for advice. I could have instructed him on the appropriate size of the solar cell."

Amanda leaned forward and draped her arms around his neck, pressing her cheek to his.

"But he wanted to do it by himself," she said soothingly, and Sarek felt his irritation ebbing away.

The garden sprinklers were the source of tension again, this time in late summer when the _plomeek_ shoots were most susceptible to dehydration. At least twice a day and usually more, someone had to supplement the automatic sprinklers with old-fashioned soaker hoses dragged along the rows of _plomeek_. It was time-consuming, messy work that fell mostly to Amanda, though Sarek helped on the days that he got home before dark.

Spock was expected to help as well, though recently it seemed to Sarek that Spock was making himself scarce when the watering needed to be done.

"That's your imagination," Amanda said, but the next time that he came home and found Amanda in the garden, soaker hose in hand, he marched into the house and found Spock in his room, writing on his PADD.

"Is this a requirement for school?" Sarek asked, trying to control his annoyance. Spock shook his head and Sarek went on. "Then explain for me why your mother is outside working while you are inside doing nothing of value."

As far as Sarek was concerned, that should have been the last of it, but two days later he came home and found the same thing—Amanda outside while Spock sat in his room.

Sarek was instantly angry with them both—Spock for laziness and Amanda for allowing it.

"This is unacceptable," he said, directing his attention to Spock as they sat at the table for the evening meal. Spock set his spoon in his bowl and let his hands drift to his lap while Amanda shifted in her seat across from him.

"What are you talking about, Sarek?" she asked.

"Spock's unwillingness to help with household chores," Sarek said, and Amanda frowned.

"If you're talking about today, he and I agreed—"

But he cut her off.

_Stop making excuses for him. _

"I'm not," she said aloud, but Sarek set her words aside impatiently.

Turning to Spock, he said, "Why have you avoided helping your mother with the garden?"

"I do not like working in the garden," Spock said promptly.

Sarek blinked in surprise.

"Your feelings about the matter are unimportant," he said. "The garden must be watered. Your mother requires assistance. You will render it. Do you understand?"

"Sarek—"

"Amanda," he said more testily than he meant to, "Spock has to contribute to the family's well-being."

He felt her about to reply when Spock spoke up first.

"Actually," he said, his dark eyes sweeping from his mother to his father and back again, "the Federation charter includes a provision about the rights of children. If you like, I can show it to you. It prohibits forcing children to do manual labor or work deemed too onerous for their size and ability."

He lowered his eyes and picked up his spoon, dipping it slowly into his stew.

Sarek was stunned.

Amanda burst out laughing.

When she caught her breath, she said, "Well, Sarek, I think our son has outlogicked us. What do you think of that?"

Placing his hands carefully on the table, Sarek said, "Unlike your mother, I do not find your words humorous. Until I tell you otherwise, you are forbidden to do anything other than sit in your room and meditate on your duty to this family."

The tsunami of Spock's emotions crashed over Sarek—his son's pent-up feelings unleashed through their family bond, a swirl of fury and distress and embarrassment and neediness—and images, too, of Vulcan school boys waylaying Spock when the teachers were preoccupied, taunting him, baiting him with words that even now Spock tried to hide from his parents, to keep them from hearing. Sarek's own anger rose and tangled with his son's, and underneath it all, Amanda's keening sorrow and dismay nearly bending him double like someone in agony.

"Spock—" he started to say, but Spock stood up abruptly, his cheeks flushed.

"I wish you were _not_ my family," Spock said.

From the corner of his eye Sarek saw Amanda, pale and stricken, her hand on her face as if she had been slapped. Her misery made his stomach lurch.

For the first and last time in his life, Sarek felt his arm lifting of its own accord and he knew that he would strike his son.

Amanda's horror stilled his hand and he stopped, motionless except for the heaving of his chest.

"Leave," he said hoarsely, and Spock stumbled out of the kitchen.

Across the table Amanda sat unmoving, not meeting his gaze.

_I would not have_—he began, but he faltered. He wasn't certain what he would have done; his loss of control was that complete.

A blast of cool air ruffled his hair at the same time that he heard the front door slam shut.

_Spock!_ Amanda called out silently, but the connection that had flared between them was muted again, Spock withdrawing into silence.

"Sarek," she said, but he was already on his feet and heading to the door. Surely Spock had enough sense not to go far in the dark. Even this close to the house, the desert was dangerous. Several times recently Sarek had seen _le-matya_ tracks on the edge of the garden. A neighbor's pet _sehlat_ had disappeared, presumably carried off by predators.

Tonight Vulcan's sister planet T'Khut was only a tiny sliver in the sky, not enough light to help him navigate. With a start, Sarek tripped over a rocky patch as he circled the house.

"Spock!" he called, but even as he did, he knew Spock wouldn't answer.

For a moment Sarek seriously considered leaving him outside.

In the distance a wild _sehlat_ yowled. The wind soughed through the young _plomeek_ plants knee–high in the garden. Now that Eridani had set, the sand gave up the heat of the day and the night air shimmered and settled in a cooling mass.

"Spock!" Sarek called again, rounding the house near the porch.

"Spock!" Amanda shouted from the front yard.

Sarek could feel Amanda's worry blossoming into real panic as the minutes rolled on.

"He cannot have gone far," he said, starting up the flitter.

His search was slow and methodical, looping in an outward spiral with the house as the hub. A hundred meters, then two, and outward until he was so far from the house that it disappeared behind tall shrubs and boulders.

And still no sign of Spock.

Setting the flitter in a dry gully, Sarek centered his thoughts and ranged outward, looking for his son in his mind. His presence was so dim that at first Sarek was sure he was hurt or frightened. But when he tried to approach him, Spock skittered away, shielding himself like someone hiding under a blanket. At last Sarek gave up, restarted the flitter, and flew home.

Amanda's face fell when he walked in alone.

"I'm calling the authorities," she said as she rushed past him to the comm in the study.

Neither one slept at all that night, Sarek vacillating between shame about his own actions and vexation at Spock. When he tried to take Amanda's hand in his own, she pulled away, such an uncharacteristic rejection of his touch that he was alarmed.

"You should rest," he suggested. The glance she shot him was so withering that he knew better than to say anything else.

When Spock opened the front door and walked in the next morning—his hair dusty, a tear in the knee of his pants—Amanda cried out and ran toward him, her arms outstretched. From the back of the entranceway Sarek saw Spock hesitate for a moment before letting his mother pull him into an embrace. When she let him go at last, Spock's fingers slid across her palm so quickly, so lightly, that Sarek almost missed it.

"I apologize," Spock said, his voice raspy, looking first at his mother and then turning to Sarek, "for speaking to you out of anger. I said words I did not mean."

"I know that," Amanda said. "We all say things we don't mean sometimes."

She looked toward Sarek and he recognized that she was giving him a cue.

_Speak to him,_ she thought.

Speak to him. Sarek was at a loss for what to say.

For hours he had thought of nothing other than this moment—Spock safely back home. Not lost, not hurt, not the unimaginable loss that only a few hours ago had seemed not only imaginable but probable.

His son standing tired and dirty and genuinely sorry for the trouble he had caused, his grief radiating outward to both Amanda and Sarek, and his gratitude, too, that they were here now, waiting for him.

And Sarek's own unspoken love for his son like a bruise on his heart, inexplicable, gigantic, almost frightening in intensity, threatening to overwhelm him, to swallow him whole if anything should ever happen to this child, this boy, this young man whose features were a shadow and an echo of his own, of Amanda's.

If anything should ever happen to him—

_My logic is uncertain where my son is concerned._

His heart welled up with relief and contentment. Amanda looked at him again and said, _Speak to him._

He opened his mouth to say something, anything, that would carry his feelings forward.

How hard it was to find the right words.

Or even adequate ones.

"Your mother was worried," he said, the words wrong and thin, hoping Spock could hear past them to his meaning. "Don't ever do that again. We need to know if you are safe."

X X X X X

Spock flexes his fingers experimentally. Despite the medic's assurance that a lingering stiffness in his wrist is normal after two weeks in a cast, he is disconcerted by how much effort it takes to make a fist, to pick up anything heavy, to curl his fingers through the handle of a tea mug and lift it.

As he does now. Sitting across from him at the break room table, Nyota cups her hands around her own tea mug and watches him with a critical eye.

"This calls for a celebration," she says, startling him. His expression apparently gives him away because she adds, "You know, because you're free now."

An image of T'Pring as she was the last time he saw her flashes through his mind. The annulment had been short, formal, tense—his father and T'Pau in attendance, T'Pring's family conspicuously absent.

Annulments on Vulcan were rare but not shameful. That he had initiated it, however, _had_ been…at least from T'Pring's point of view. She had not bothered to hide her anger.

But he's told no one on Earth about the annulment, not even Chris, the closest person he has to a confidant. Nyota must be referring to something else.

"From your cast?"

_Ah, of course._ He nods and says, "Indeed."

He looks down at his hand and has another memory, this one from earlier today when he had stood behind Nyota as she worked at the computer, and leaning forward to pick up a stack of PADDs she had set to the side, he let his fingertips slip across her forearm.

Nothing blatant, nothing extraordinary. Something one human might do to another without a thought.

But his touch was planned and much anticipated, his shields up to keep his thoughts and hers separate, partitioned away from each other. As much as he desired a brush of her mind, he had settled for the touch of her skin, cool and silky, with hair so fine that it was barely visible.

It was something he had wanted to do ever since he woke up briefly in the hospital, calling out her name.

And if he is honest with himself, something he wants to do again when the opportunity arises.

That revelation unsettles him. Where, exactly, does he think this is going?

"So what are you going to do?" she asks, startling him again. "To celebrate?"

"Is it required?" he says, quirking the corner of his mouth. She rewards him with a smile of her own.

"Absolutely," she says. "If you had broken your leg, you would have to celebrate by going dancing."

"And a broken wrist?" he says, holding up his arm, his hand turned palm up. "What does that celebration require?"

For a moment she continues to smile, but then her expression shifts, as if she is gazing inward at something remembered.

"I think," she says, sliding her eyes toward him, "that when a broken wrist heals, you are required to wave more to your friends."

She laughs lightly and raises her hand as if preparing to wave.

"To tell them goodbye?" Spock says, playing along, and she says, "To tell them hello."

Before he realizes what she is planning, she lowers her hand and grazes his wrist.

Her touch is quick and teasing and so unexpected that he doesn't have time to corral his thoughts.

She blinks once and frowns slightly as she pulls her hand away.

But not before he knows what she knows—that he had not fooled her earlier in the lab with his pretended nonchalance, that she knew as soon as his fingers brushed her arm that he was doing it deliberately.

And she had not minded. Had, in fact, welcomed it.

"Commander, I—" she starts, and he is suddenly fearful of what she might say.

_That she's had time to reconsider her response. That this is ill-advised._

"I owe you a meal," he says to keep her words at bay. "Now that my wrist is healed—"

"Oh, that's right!" she says, and just like that, the tension dissipates. "I never did get to eat that meal I cooked at your apartment!"

A good thing, as it turned out. Spock had come home from Vulcan with one of his mother's recipes and had offered to cook for Nyota soon after he was released from the hospital. The cast, however, made preparing the meal difficult and Nyota had taken over the chore.

Exhaustion had sabotaged the evening. Before he could eat, he fell asleep on the sofa and Nyota had slipped away, leaving the uneaten vegetable tagine in the cooler.

The vegetable tagine laced with plenty of cinnamon—which, he recalled later, his mother had warned him about.

"Some Vulcans can't eat it," she told him, "including your father. It works like cacao—only more so!"

While he was eating the vegetables, he didn't know they would make him as tipsy as a mug of hot chocolate. He's still relieved that Nyota wasn't around to see him afterwards—

Now he has an opportunity to do the evening right, to prepare a meal they can share. To enjoy each other's company.

To decide what all that entails.

Against his better judgment, he lets his imagination drift. A meal, and conversation, and the feel of her skin—

"Tonight," he says, and she looks up. "I could cook for you tonight. At my apartment."

Her smile lights up her face.

"I'd like that," she says, but then her expression darkens and his heart begins to race. "But not tonight. I have chorale practice. We're getting ready for the spring concert and I can't miss."

He's disappointed and relieved in equal measure.

What a foolhardy idea, what a needless temptation to put himself through. What was he thinking?

His father's recent words come back to him unbidden.

_I would not have—_

An odd parallel, the images his father shared during his healing trance—of himself as a challenging 12 year old, his father's patience pushed to the brink of violence.

Spock has always admired his father's control, his unnatural equanimity in the face of provocation. Yet the image of his father caught in the nexus between love and fury, his hand raised against his son—

Skirting the edge of control, but barely, Amanda's voice calling him back from the brink.

That Sarek wrestled with the same gap between reason and emotion is a strange source of comfort to Spock now.

_I would not have—_

"Another time, then," he says, blanking his expression to hide the truth.

The truth that his intentions in inviting her tonight are suspect. That he has no assurance that they would have shared a meal and nothing more, nothing compromising, nothing that would have brought their careers crashing down.

That he is his father's son after all, mute and stumbling in his love, capable of wounding with a careless touch.

**A/N: Okay, so technically this chapter breaks the pattern…Sarek tells this story and it is more his than Amanda's…but he spoke up and I had to listen. **

**I've written before about Spock's bus accident, but not from his point of view. That story is "The Visitor," and in my little timeline where I play in the Star Trek universe, it comes right before Spock and Nyota finally become lovers in "The Word You Mean." **

**Even when I love certain characters, I think to be believable they have to have darker moments from time to time. Some readers object to that, so I hope you weren't troubled by the way I show Sarek and Spock in this chapter.**

**Thanks for reading this story and leaving reviews. Those reviews are like chocolate!**


	9. Family

**Chapter Nine: Family**

**Disclaimer: I do not profit from writing about these characters. Alas.**

"Here's another one," Spock hears Nyota call from the living room. "That makes three."

With a silicone pad to protect his hand, he lifts the hot top of the red clay tagine, and after looking around fruitlessly for a trivet, hesitates and sets it on the kitchen counter. His apartment kitchen is small and poorly stocked—a handicap he hasn't noticed until now that he's trying to cook a meal.

He takes most of his meals on the fly—a carton of yogurt or a piece of fruit eaten at his desk while he works. Lately he and Nyota have started getting lunch several times a week in the Academy cafeteria or at the deli near the faculty apartments—nothing more elaborate than wraps or salads, eaten quickly.

An actual cooked dinner is rare. An evening meal shared with anyone is rarer still.

Tonight, however, he and Nyota are in his apartment grading first year xenolinguistics exams before the midterm, and rather than stopping their work, he has cobbled together some sliced vegetables and herbs and cooked them in the red tagine his mother gave him when he first came to the Academy.

If he had planned ahead more carefully, he could have gathered all the necessary ingredients for one of the Vulcan specialties his mother prefers. As it is, however, he's had to make do with week-old cauliflower and a bruised eggplant.

Being caught unprepared this way makes him uncomfortable, makes him question himself. If he weren't so distracted—

Repressing a sigh, he thinks about his _asenoi_ in the corner of his bedroom, pictures lighting it and sitting cross-legged on the floor, allowing himself to sink through several layers of consciousness until he is able to find a measure of equilibrium.

And even as he does, he knows this won't happen tonight.

He pulls out two plates from an overhead cabinet and spoons some of the vegetables from the tagine on each. As he carries them into the living room, Nyota looks up from the sofa where she sits sideways, surrounded by PADDs, a stylus in her hand.

"Did you hear me?" she asks, and he tilts his head and sets the plates on the end table between the sofa and a large stuffed chair. "Three students missed the second question because they gave alternate definitions for _k'rotcke_. I think your rubric is too narrow."

"Explain," he says, settling into the chair and steepling his fingers under his chin, something Nyota calls his "thinking professor" pose.

"Well," she says, angling her body toward him while holding up a student PADD to the light, "your rubric says the students must translate _k'rotcke_ as _clan _or _family, _but one student wrote _tribe_, one said _line_, and another said _unit._ Those are all perfectly good synonyms for clan or family, but I'm having to mark them wrong."

"Because they _are_ wrong," Spock says. "The Yasen-ar recognize no relationships other than genetic ones. In their language, _k'rotcke_ can mean your closest genetic relatives—your family—or your distant ones—your clan. It cannot mean your tribe, because tribal members are not always blood kin. Likewise, the word _line_ suggests only direct ancestors and descendants but would not include the other genetic relatives recognized by the Yasen-ar, such as siblings or cousins. And _unit_—that is far too generic a term, even for most Standard speakers."

While he speaks he gazes over her head—to keep his focus on his words and not on…her.

Even so, maintaining his poise is a struggle. Against his will, he recalls seeing Nyota sitting in the same spot a week ago, toweling her hair dry after being caught in a sudden downpour outside the nearby deli.

Watching her stand up to leave that night, he had felt a sort of desperation that took him by surprise, that propelled him toward her, his hand outstretched.

"You are shaking," he said.

Although she laughed and dismissed it as being cold, he knew it wasn't true. He allowed his fingers to drift to her arm, allowed his thoughts to slip across uncensored—and he showed her his longing…and the longed for resolution.

"We could be censured if we continue," he said when she stepped into his embrace, and she nodded even as she lifted her face to his.

Their lovemaking had been urgent and swift, months of barely acknowledged fantasies distilled into something so rushed and intense that they were both astonished. An irrevocable line crossed, certainly, but if Spock had imagined that sexual intimacy would lessen the grinding, persistent need he feels for Nyota, he was disappointed.

If anything, he is more distracted than ever, more hyper-vigilant when he is with her, more miserable when they are apart.

And now, layered over everything, is the worry that they could be caught.

_Be careful what you wish for._

His mother's words haunting him again.

"If you are going to be that literal minded," Nyota says, putting the PADD on the sofa beside her, "then even the words _family_ and _clan_ are too imprecise."

"Explain," Spock says, his tone exactly as before. He sees Nyota dart him a glance to show that she knows he's mocking her.

"This is being translated into Standard, right?"

He raises an eyebrow in agreement.

"Then the listener's understanding of _family_ and _clan_ figure into the translation."

"Your point?"

She reaches to the end table and picks up the plate of vegetables.

"I can't attest to all speakers of Standard," she says, spearing a slice of eggplant with her fork, "but when humans say that someone is family, they don't just mean blood kin. Your great aunt Matilda's husband would be part of your family, even if you have never met him."

"I do not have a great aunt Matilda."

"I'm being hypothetical," Nyota says, chewing and frowning in equal measure. With a swallow, she adds, "If you _did _have a great aunt Matilda, her husband would be your family."

"It would depend," Spock says, picking up his own plate. "If he were human, then he would be my family. If great aunt Matilda were Vulcan, however, he would merely be part of the clan."

"What's the difference?"

"By Vulcan law, only siblings, parents, and grandparents are family. All other genetic relatives or relatives by marriage are members of the clan."

"Okay," Nyota says, "forget those. Human families include people who aren't even legally related. Really good friends, neighbors we grow up with, people we depend on for emotional support—we call them family."

"Rendering the term meaningless."

"My point," Nyota says, waving her fork for emphasis, "is that a Standard speaker would have a much broader understanding of what a _family_ or a _clan_ is than the original Yasen-ar speaker—that a really accurate translation of _k'rotcke _would say something like _blood kin_ or _gene-sharer_. If you are going to take off points when a student translates it as _tribe_, then you aren't being fair, since _tribe_ or _line_ or _unit_ are really as imprecise as _family_ and _clan_ as far as the Yasen-ar are concerned."

"Since _family_ and _clan_ can include non-blood relatives, at least in human parlance."

With a triumphant sweep of her fork, Nyota says, "Exactly!"

"Then," Spock says, "I must amend the rubric. Please go back and mark _family_ and _clan_ as incorrect answers as well."

"Wait a minute!" Nyota splutters, and he waits to see how long it takes her to realize that he is joking.

Four seconds. That's all it takes before her brows unknit and she laughs.

Not so long ago she would have thought what most people thought—that Vulcans have no sense of humor, no sense of playfulness.

Now, however—

She sets the plate back on the end table and crosses the distance between the sofa and the chair in two steps, startling him when she bends her knees and straddles his lap.

Sliding her hands up his chest and resting her palms against the side of his face, she leans forward and whispers, "Do you really want all your students to fail? Because that's what will happen."

One summer Spock and his cousin Chris had built and deliberately shorted out a number of small engines to test the strength of various types of tensile materials to carry an electric current. Sometimes the failures were spectacular—loud explosive shut downs accompanied by smoke and flame.

Other times the engines simply fizzled or sparked and then stopped dead.

Nyota lets one hand drift up to his ear and he knows that his brain is about to short out—though with a spectacular explosion or with a quiet shutdown, he isn't certain.

He darts his hand and catches her wrist.

"Nyota—"

She lets out a little gasp and he hurriedly lets go.

"Too much?" she says, and he takes a breath.

Including that first time after the rain storm, they've ended up in bed twice before, and both times Spock has asked himself if he is prepared to go back to being less, to step away from the intimacy that could—if they are found out—cost them their careers in Starfleet.

Having her here tonight to help grade the exams is a test of sorts, not just of his own control but of his resolve.

A single transgression—even two—could conceivably be explained away. An ongoing sexual relationship, on the other hand—

As if she senses his sudden seriousness, she leans back and lowers her hands from his face.

To his relief, he's able to think more clearly.

"I've been thinking," she says, and he feels his heart speed up. If she suggests that they stop what they have started, he's prepared to agree that it is the logical choice. He's even prepared to suffer the particular purgatory of knowing the feel and smell and taste of her without ever reaching for her again.

But he isn't prepared to maintain any façade of equanimity if he does.

He also isn't prepared for what she says next.

"I need to change my birth control."

His eyebrows fly up but before he can reply she says, "I know my antigen shots are probably enough, but just to be safe, I want to switch to an anovulant. That way there won't be any question—"

There it is again, an attendant sorrow that dogs him when he considers his genetic heritage.

He's always known that his very existence is the result of medical intervention, that Vulcans and humans, however similar in appearance, spawned in different genetic oceans and his parents required help to bridge that gap. And while doctors have assured him that he himself is not infertile, the odds are high that any partner—Vulcan or human—would have difficulty conceiving a child from his hybrid genes.

He starts to tell Nyota that her worry is moot, that her normal antigen shots that make her immune to human gametes are probably not even necessary.

But he falters. Saying anything feels like a prediction of a barren future—in more ways than one.

Instead, he tells her that when he has time, he will visit the infirmary as well to begin his own antigen shots.

"So there won't be any questions," he says, not because he has any doubts, but because she does, and he can lift them from her with that simple action.

She slides her hands back to his face and says, "Then I guess the smart thing to do until then is…well, not this."

As she lowers her hands and stands up, he is oddly bereft, as if he's lost something unexpectedly—which is when he realizes that for all his brave thoughts earlier about stepping back, he's been quietly anticipating getting her into his bed before she goes back to her dorm tonight.

He picks up their plates and heads into the kitchen, and when he returns, she has moved the student PADDs from the sofa and parked herself on the arm near the end table.

"Come here," she says when he heads to the chair, and he detours and sits at the other end of the sofa, teasing her.

"So that's how it's going to be," she says, laughing. She scoots toward him and says, "I didn't mean to put a damper on the evening."

He knows she means the pragmatic talk of birth control but he pretends otherwise.

"My xenolinguistics students will have you to thank for their low marks on this exam," he says as she lifts his left arm and drapes it over her shoulders, pressing her back against his chest.

"You aren't really going to count that question wrong, are you? You ought to throw it out!"

"The question is not faulty," he says, letting his gaze drift downward to where her hair tickles his hand. Following his eyes, she reaches up and tugs on the hairband that holds up her ponytail. With a flick of her wrist, she lets her hair cascade down, and then shooting him a decidedly mischievous look, she says, "But your rubric _is_ faulty. You shouldn't be so narrow-minded about what constitutes a family."

For a moment he debates arguing that her concern about birth control is misplaced—that their caution right now is unnecessary. That they should forego grading the rest of the exams and—

At once the thought feels intrusive and selfish and he sets it aside.

"My mother would agree with you," he says, pulling her closer, feeling her slip one arm across his waist.

"Tell me about it," she says, and he permits himself a moment to enjoy the sensation of the weight of her in his arms before he begins his story.

X X X X

The hired flitter bobbed and wove, and Amanda thought seriously about asking Sarek to stop long enough to let her stomach settle. They were already running behind schedule, however, and she knew how much he disliked being late.

Swallowing, she beat back a wave of nausea. To her left in the pilot's seat, Sarek turned to her as if he sensed her uneasiness. Which he should, she thought. She'd been talking about it for several days.

Even before the flitter ride her stomach had been upset. She was keyed up and tired both—mostly from not sleeping on the shuttle flight from Earth to Vulcan but also wearied by the heat and gravity. The only other time she had been to Vulcan she had tagged along while her sister Cecilia attended a medical conference two years ago, and she didn't recall feeling so tired on that visit. Adrenaline, probably—the excitement of finally visiting a planet she had grown up hearing about.

Amanda hadn't known any Vulcans personally then, had seen them as unapproachable, exotic, remote.

A lot had happened in a couple of years.

Once the flitter passed the outskirts of Shi'Kahr, the desert landscape stretched out ahead of them, stark and foreboding—and also, Amanda thought, strangely compelling.

Rather like the Vulcans themselves.

"There," Sarek said, pointing through the wind screen, "just over that rise to the left of the mountain. That's my clan's homeplace."

Amanda visored her eyes with her hand. Despite the heat, she shivered.

For the first time since she and Sarek had started discussing a possible future together, she was here on Vulcan to meet his family.

Or at least to meet his mother. Sarek's father rarely saw company—not since his Bendii's Syndrome symptoms became obvious. A degenerative disorder, Bendii's stripped Vulcans of their emotional control—a deeply shaming condition that most sufferers dealt with by remaining secluded. Skon was no exception.

At least as important as meeting Sarek's mother was seeing the actual homeplace. Sarek had told Amanda that members of the S'chn T'gai clan had been bonded and married in the place for _koon-ut-kal-if-fee_ for at least two millennia and probably longer. Older members, such as Sarek's parents, lived in nearby homes built centuries ago.

Such casual references to time this way still caught Amanda by surprise. In chronological years Sarek was more than twice as old as she was, yet by Vulcan standards he was an adult in his prime, a discrepancy that she took some time getting used to.

"Your family will accuse me of _robbing the cradle_," he had teased once, obviously proud of employing a human idiom.

It was no coincidence that she had introduced him to her family before meeting his own. Seattle was an easy hop from either San Francisco or New York where Sarek split his time between embassies. By the time Cecilia met him, Amanda had already told her so much that her sister worried that he would feel awkward around her, as if she had been an eavesdropper in their relationship.

But Cecilia and Sarek had gotten along from the start, both more reserved than Amanda, both finding her vivacity a welcome counterpoint to their own quietude.

Amanda's mother, on the other hand, had been less gracious. Not that she had ever said anything untoward or rude to Sarek directly. Nor even to Amanda.

But her disapproval was clear by what she didn't say.

"She's just disappointed that we aren't planning a big wedding," Amanda had told Sarek. It wasn't exactly a lie, but it wasn't the truth, either. Sarek, however, seemed unaware of Irene Grayson's unspoken skepticism about him and took Amanda's words at face value.

"Then perhaps we should," he said, "if that is the human custom."

Amanda shook her head.

"That would be a nightmare! So much planning and expense, and Mother insisting we invite all her friends we don't even know. We could avoid all that if we schedule our wedding on Vulcan."

"Vulcan weddings are not scheduled," Sarek said, his face a mask. "Couples do not marry until—"

"Oh," Amanda said, blushing for them both. "Well."

"The bonding ceremony," Sarek said, "_can_ be scheduled. Unless you are still unsure."

Of course she was unsure.

As much as she relished the moments when she and Sarek were linked telepathically, his intellect as bright and sharp as crystal, his amusement and humor a revelation, she had trouble imagining being permanently in his mind—and more so, having him in hers. The loss of privacy was daunting, the way such openness laid bare any pretense.

She was ready to marry Sarek on a moment's notice—understood that his necessity then would be overpowering and even frightening. Was prepared to live with him beforehand as his companion and lover—adapting to his culture, making a home on Vulcan.

But dwelling together in each other's thoughts—the idea gave her pause.

This trip to Vulcan, then, was to give her time to consider the idea. Marriage, Sarek had told her, was not an option without being bonded first.

The flitter landed in a cloud of red dust. In the distance Amanda could see several low buildings made of adobe or something similar. Any trees or gardens were hidden from view. Instead, large angular boulders dominated the foreground, though further off Amanda noticed a mountain range, purple and blue in the haze.

Two liveried attendants opened the flitter doors before she had a chance to release the latch herself. Neither looked at her directly nor offered her a hand—their deference reminding her of footmen in old stories of royalty. She remarked on it softly as she and Sarek followed them to the closest building.

"Vulcan has no word for _royalty_," Sarek said, "in the way that humans mean it. Some clans, however, are accorded a certain status that to outsiders might be construed that way."

"You never told me you were a prince!" Amanda said, and Sarek cocked one eyebrow to let her know he recognized he was being chaffed.

"Not my clan," he said. "Though Sybok's mother was from such a clan. At least, that is what they claim."

Sarek was so rarely angry or judgmental that his last words crashed in Amanda's ears. She turned to look at him closely but his face revealed nothing of the upset of his words.

Whenever Sarek spoke of his son, Amanda sensed not only his anger but his genuine distress at being kept out of his life.

"Because Sybok's mother and I never married," Sarek told her once, "when she died, custody was awarded to his maternal grandparents. By law, they control how often I see him."

"But why don't they—" Amanda had started to ask, but Sarek's expression clouded over so quickly that she shook her head and fell silent.

She'd pressed for few details since then—such as why Sarek had not married Sybok's mother, or why she had died. Such restraint on Amanda's part was unusual—she herself recognized that—but she didn't want to add to his pain by prying. When he was ready, he would tell her.

An elderly woman wearing a heavy green robe met them in the entrance hall.

"It is pleasing to see you again, T'Ola," Sarek said formally, and the elderly woman inclined her head a fraction in acknowledgment. "May I present to you Amanda Grayson of Earth."

Amanda nodded and said, "Lady T'Ola, the honor is mine."

On the flitter ride Sarek had told her that T'Ola had been with his family since before he was born, and though she was unmarried and therefore rated no specific honorific with her name, offering one would win Amanda favor.

Lifting her hooded eyes to Amanda, T'Ola said, "You honor us with your presence, Miss Grayson."

Amanda saw the older woman make eye contact with Sarek and some look crossed between them. _ Approval of his choice? _ She made a note to ask him later.

"I will inform your mother that you are here," T'Ola said, ushering them into the sitting room before she turned and left.

Sarek stood for a moment longer before joining Amanda on the sofa.

"My father," he said slowly, deliberately, "requires my mother's control. When she's with him, he has some measure of comfort. He doesn't mean to, but he projects his emotions to those close by. It is…draining…to be in close proximity of someone with Bendii's. "

"Because they are bonded."

"For anyone," Sarek said. "But, yes, bondmates suffer most. My mother…feels…what my father feels."

He looked up quickly and Amanda knew with a certain intuitive leap that he was intentionally showing her the worse aspects of being bonded before she made any decision. Looking around quickly to make sure they were alone, she slipped her fingers across his palm.

At the sound of a faint shuffle down the hall, she pulled her hand back.

"My mother," Sarek said, standing up. Amanda got to her feet and faced the doorway.

Whatever she expected, she didn't expect the woman who stood there. Tiny, almost wizened, Sarek's mother was shorter than Amanda, partly because she was stooped over, as if she carried a weight on her shoulders.

Her hair was wispy and so pale that it looked luminescent in the dim light. She wore a thin blue cloak that seemed to glide along the floor as she made her way slowly forward.

Only her eyes resembled her son's—and there the resemblance was remarkable. Both had the same dark eyes, the same steady gaze.

For the second time that day, Amanda shivered in the heat.

"Mother—" Sarek began, but she silenced him with a motion of her hand.

"Please forgive my haste, Miss Grayson," she said, reaching out to brace herself on Sarek's arm as she lowered herself to the sofa. "And please sit. I can only stay away for a few moments."

As Amanda sat down, she caught a glimpse of Sarek, his tension palpable, his brow furrowed.

_The close proximity to someone with Bendii's? Or because he was upset at seeing his mother this way? _It was frustrating not to be able to reach out and touch him, to access what he was feeling right now._  
><em>

A shout in the distance startled her. Almost immediately, T'Ola was at the doorway.

"Lady T'Aara," she said, and Sarek's mother lifted her hand to indicate that she had heard her. T'Ola disappeared back down the hall.

"We must talk," she said to Sarek, "but your father suffers when I leave him. Even T'Ola grows impatient with him. He refuses to let anyone else sit with him."

"Tell him I am here," Sarek said, leaning forward, and Amanda watched as his mother grew still and seemed to pull inward. In another moment she shook her head.

"He refuses to see you," she said.

Another sound echoed from the hall and once again T'Ola was at the doorway.

"I must go," T'Aara said, not bothering to hide her weariness.

Her face crumpled as she lowered her hands to the sofa, preparing to rise.

With a sudden impulse, Amanda said, "Tell him _I'm_ here. Tell him…I need to meet him. That…I'm…_used_ to emotional outbursts. That I have had a few myself."

_I'm sorry!_ she thought, wishing Sarek could hear her words, giving him an apologetic shrug. His face was unreadable.

A moment lapsed, then two.

_She must have crossed some unforgivable line in Vulcan etiquette._ Folding her hands, she looked down.

"Go," T'Aara said so softly that at first Amanda wasn't sure she had spoken. "While I talk to my son."

She needed no more prodding. Following T'Ola down the hall, Amanda tried to notice everything—a niche in the wall where a large ceremonial-looking weapon was mounted, a small table with purple flowers arranged in a rough clay bowl, a patterned rug at the threshold of the room at the end, all contributing to a sense of age and purpose in the house.

The room itself was starkly bare—the walls dark gray, the lighting recessed and faint. In the center of the room was a raised dais with a narrow bed. A thin man in a white shift lay prone, uncovered, writhing in obvious pain. Without intending to, Amanda gasped—and the man's motions stopped.

Stepping closer to the bed, Amanda saw him turn his face toward her, his dark eyes unfocused and blinking.

"Sarek?" he called, and she stepped up until she was next to his bed.

"It's Amanda," she said. "Amanda Grayson. Sarek's…friend."

"Sarek's friend?"

"Yes," she said. Skon's hand rose and trembled in the air and Amanda slipped her fingers around his, steadying him. His palm was unnaturally cool and dry but she felt the familiar buzz of a Vulcan touch.

Touching Sarek this way meant seeing what he saw, hearing what he heard, knowing what he knew—his organized world laid out like a grid before her.

Skon's thoughts, by contrast, were so chaotic that Amanda felt like someone on an old-fashioned ferris wheel, whirled up and over, tumbled and almost dizzy.

"Sarek's friend?" Skon said again, and she tried to send him a collage of images of her with Sarek—walking down a street in San Francisco, eating at their favorite Moroccan restaurant near the Vulcan embassy, sharing a quiet conversation—ordinary, mundane actions that she thought might explain her relationship with his son.

She felt Skon's thoughts sift and sort and settle into something more orderly.

"You are here to help him with Sybok?"

The question startled her and she frowned. Skon frowned, too.

"No," she said, trying to soothe him. "Sybok isn't here. We are here to see you. And T'Aara. Sarek has been away for some time—"

"You must help him," Skon said, squeezing her hand with a jolt. "A father should know his son."

To her shock, Amanda felt tears spring to her eyes.

"Yes," Skon said, "you know how sad it is. _You_ know. No one else knows, but you know. Help him."

Skon closed his eyes and took a shuddering breath, his hand going limp. Carefully Amanda lowered his hand to his chest and listened as his breathing evened out.

"He will sleep now," T'Ola said from behind her, and Amanda looked up to see Sarek and his mother standing in the doorway.

"He was confused," Amanda said as she stepped out into the hall. "He thought Sybok was here."

"He is," T'Aara said, and Amanda felt more than saw Sarek watching her.

"But I thought—" she said, and Sarek took her elbow and said, "A short visit only, because my father's health has deteriorated. An attendant brought him here this morning and takes him back tomorrow."

Immediately Amanda's heart began to hammer so hard that she felt it in her throat. _Sarek's son!_ A part of his world she had never thought she would see!

He shepherded her back to the sitting room, his mother leading the way. Someone had already set out a teapot on the side table, and Sarek poured his mother a cup before offering one to Amanda.

"I can't," she said, willing him to understand why she was nervous.

A look of mild bewilderment flashed across his face. _Where was telepathy when you needed it?_

Suddenly a tall young man entered the room and Sarek became uncharacteristically fidgety.

Trailing the young man was a small Vulcan boy the size of a human six or seven year old—Sybok, obviously, his dark hair cut straight across his brow accenting his rounded face; his arms and legs sturdy, almost stocky. His chin was tucked down but he surveyed everyone in the room carefully with his warm, brown eyes.

When he made eye contact with Amanda, he paused and blinked. For a moment she was sure he was going to speak, but instead he tipped his head to the side and looked away.

"Sybok," T'Aara said, and he took several steps closer to her. "Speak to your father."

Without looking up, Sybok said, "Father," his voice so plaintive that Amanda's throat tightened.

The young man—the attendant who had escorted Sybok there—hovered in the background while Sarek asked Sybok a series of questions.

_What was he learning in school? What special interests did he have? Did he still have the pet sehlat Sarek had given him?_

The entire conversation spoken in a monotone—Sarek formal and awkward, Sybok answering in reluctant monosyllables.

Soon enough they fell silent.

"This is Amanda," Sarek said abruptly, and Sybok turned his gaze on her.

"Come here," she beckoned, not expecting him to move, but to her surprise he came to her right away and stood so close that she could have reached out and touched him if she had dared.

"Your father says you are a good student," she said, cutting her eyes at Sarek, hoping he wouldn't contradict her. He hadn't, in fact, told her anything about Sybok's personal life, but she saw Sybok's eyes light up and she felt justified.

_This little boy needs the lie_, she thought.

"Do you know that I am a teacher?" she said, and Sybok shook his head so solemnly that Amanda had to stifle a smile. "I am," she said. "And some of my students are about your age. Do you know what they have been learning about recently?"

Again Sybok shook his head, but this time his expression was less cautious.

"You. All about you—or rather, about Vulcan. They want to know everything about your world—what it looks like, what people do here, what games the children play. When I told them I was coming for a visit, they made me promise to record some images to show them. Would you like to send them a message? Tell them some things you like to do?"

She pulled her comm from her pocket and held it out. Sybok's eyes followed it and she was convinced she saw the ghost of a smile at the corner of his mouth. For a moment she was sure he was going to reach for the comm.

But then he glanced up at the attendant at the door and his face fell.

"No," he said softly. "Maybe later."

The attendant signaled to Sybok to retire with him then, and Amanda was surprised to find the fingers of her left hand pressed firmly against her chest, as if to keep her heart from leaping away.

Skon woke shortly afterwards and T'Aara excused herself, leaving Sarek pacing around the sitting room, Amanda pouring herself a cup of tea at last.

"You have to do something," she said when she sat down, teacup in hand.

"Explain," Sarek said, stopping his pacing and turning toward her.

"He's such an unhappy little boy," she said. "He's lost so much already. It doesn't seem fair that he has to lose you, too."

"I have no options," Sarek said, sitting on the other end of the sofa from her. "The law is clear in this matter."

"Then the law is wrong!" Amanda said. "He needs you. You're his family. You wouldn't even have seen him at all if we hadn't come on this visit. It's just a coincidence that you are both here at the same time."

Sarek ran his hand over his brow—an action so unlike him that Amanda set her cup down and moved to his side.

"Sybok's grandmother," Sarek began, "is rightly concerned that he has a stable home. His mother was not…we were not…together…"

He stumbled to a stop and Amanda put her hand on his arm.

"You didn't live together?"

"No," he said, as if the word cost him something to say it. "She…was unwilling. After Sybok was born, I thought she might change her mind, but…she died soon afterward."

"What happened?" Amanda said, but Sarek shook his head.

"I have my suspicions, but I have not been told," he said, his eyes cast down. "She was unhappy, Amanda. I didn't know that for a long time, but she was."

"You mean she was depressed?"

"Vulcans do not get depressed."

"Apparently they do," Amanda said. "There's no shame in it."

But even as she said it, she knew that for Vulcans there would be shame. What Vulcan would ever admit to suffering from depression—from any mental illness—as proud and committed as they were to logic, to rational thought? She felt her face grow hot with anger.

They sat in silence for a minute, Sarek visibly trying to regain his composure.

"What can I do to help?" Amanda said, and Sarek sat up and said, "There is nothing to be done as long as Sybok's grandmother remains his guardian."

"Then we have to convince her that he needs to be with you," Amanda said, and sensing that Sarek was about to argue with her, she hurried on. "You said his grandmother wants him to live in a stable home. Then let's make one for him. You and me."

"We have no guarantee that his grandmother will agree," Sarek said.

Running her fingers up his arm, Amanda said, "That's not the only reason I want to make a home with you."

"I thought you were uncertain about being bonded," Sarek said, and Amanda cocked her head and considered.

She _had_ been uncertain—was, if she was honest—_still_ unsure about what it meant—what it would mean—to be bonded.

But more than that, she was certain that she wanted to find out.

X X X X X

Before he finishes the story, Spock feels Nyota fall asleep, her breathing deepening and becoming regular. He shifts his shoulder a fraction so that her cheek rests on his chest instead of on the bony knob of his arm.

From this angle he has trouble seeing her face. Her body, on the other hand, is stretched out in full view, her uniform rucked up around her hips, one foot tucked neatly on the sofa, the other partway off the cushion.

He lets his vision slide up the curve of her calf and around her knee and on to where her thigh meets the hem of her jumper.

_A mistake._

He shifts uncomfortably and tries to will away his growing arousal.

The student exams. He's still hours away from finishing them, even if he does eliminate the second question.

Which, in retrospect, may not have been the best-constructed exam question he's ever written.

He distracts himself by rethinking the question in its entirety. Instead of using the Yasen-ar language, he should have found one with fewer cultural similarities to Standard. A'Opli, for instance, would have been both harder and more precise for his students. He makes a mental note to add a question about A'Opli on the final exam in two months.

Nyota lets out a sigh and draws one knee up over his leg.

_Misery._

The exam. He was thinking about the final exam.

Last semester his final exam was so difficult that his failure rate caught the attention of the dean. Not that Spock was scolded, but he was cautioned about it.

Perhaps A'Opli is more advanced than first year xenolinguistics students can handle. Nyota will have a better idea about that.

He dips his head toward hers and catches a whiff of her shampoo—something with fruity overtones, much more heavily scented that what she usually uses.

Something a smell-seeking Orion would prefer. The roommate's, then. Nyota must be out of her own brand.

Feeling a measure of satisfaction at his deduction, Spock takes another whiff, and another.

With a start, he realizes that he is gripping her more tightly. When he relaxes his arms, she sighs again and slides her hand across his chest and lets it rest near her chin.

_He has trouble breathing._

Numbers have always been a refuge, but tonight they betray him.

He's lain here with her in his arms 54.35 minutes, the last 12.4 minutes so uncomfortably excited that it's all he can do not to wake her and communicate his desire directly.

Which he has agreed not to do because of a .01376 chance that her current birth control might not be protection enough.

Infinitesimal odds, actually. Almost so small as to be incalculable.

But not quite.

His mother's miscarriage when he was seven...he recalls that frightening night with unwanted clarity. A planned pregnancy? He's never asked. He needs to.

He takes a breath so deep that Nyota stirs and wakes.

"I must have fallen asleep," she says unnecessarily. "What are you doing?"

She cranes her neck up to look at him and he says, "Thinking."

"What about?" she says, the sleepiness in her voice making her sound so sultry that he feels a little hitch in his throat.

_If he asks her, she will say yes, will unzip and unbuckle and slip over him right here, without leaving this sofa, until they are both so unwound that all they can do is lie tangled, exhausted, on the cushions._

_If he asks her._

So he doesn't.

"I was thinking about what you said earlier," he says, nudging a loose lock of hair chastely from her cheek, "about families and clans. How humans decide who they are."

"Rendering the term meaningless, you said," she reminds him, and he quirks one eyebrow and says, "I've had time to reconsider. I may have been mistaken."

**A/N: This chapter happens between "The Word You Mean" and "People Will Say."**

**If you are still out there reading, let me know! Your support means more than you can know!  
><strong>


	10. Bend

**Chapter Ten: Bend**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing here except the mischief, and it doesn't pay. Sigh.**

"You're going, aren't you?" she asks.

Spock studiously avoids looking up at Nyota. From where he sits at his desk working, his back is to the door of his office where she is standing—probably as she often does, with her left elbow bent, her hand pressed against the doorframe, leaning slightly, her skirt gently rucked up around her hips by her off-balance stance, his attention pulled to the curve of her rear—

Which is why he is careful not to look right now.

An innocuous action her part, of course, to stand this way. He's considered commenting on it before but hesitates because she might feel self-conscious or embarrassed.

And because she might stop.

_Focus._

"Well?" she says, stepping into the office and sitting in the chair at the side of his desk.

At last he glances over at her. As he expects, she is smiling broadly, her excitement easy to read.

"I am not going," he says, looking back to his computer monitor. As he expects, he senses her mood going flat.

"Why not?"

Her disappointment is palpable and he feels a flutter of uneasiness about being the cause.

When he opened his mail early this morning, he saw the invitation right away—a proposed midterm recruitment junket with a stopover at Riverside Shipyards. Nyota and eleven other top students were listed as participants. He and three faculty members were given a chance to supervise.

He immediately began drafting a note to Dean Richardson declining.

Not that the recruitment tours aren't important. A recent dip in enrollment at the Academy has been bruited about in faculty meetings as a source of concern. An uptick in anti-Federation xenophobia is probably the reason—in the past month two local rallies of a group calling itself Earth United has put anti-alien sentiment squarely in the public eye.

Which is why Spock is on the recruitment trip list. A calculated image of Starfleet's diversity?

He chafes at the role he's being asked to play, as if he somehow represents all offworlders.

He also chafes at the inconvenience of rescheduling his classes for the rest of the week.

And if the truth be told, at the daunting task of socializing with strangers for three days, of working as part of a team to chat up recruits—neither _teamwork_ nor _chatting_ coming naturally to him.

He turns to Nyota and says, "Because I do not wish to."

A frown flickers across her face and she says, "That's not a reason."

"It is mine," he says, turning back to his monitor. He's aware that Nyota is watching him closely for a clue about his reticence. For a moment she says nothing, and then she stands up and steps back to the office door, shutting it.

He listens as she walks back to the chair and settles in, leaning so far over the desk toward him that he catches a whiff of her scent—soap, and the strawberries she had for breakfast, and something unnamed but spicy, like nutmeg or cinnamon.

"Now tell me," she says, her voice low and husky, "why you don't want to spend three days away from the Academy. With me."

She's being playful—her intonation, her pacing intentionally comic. But Spock recognizes the seriousness behind her question.

What it implies, however, he isn't quite sure. Surely she knows that they will have less time alone with each other on the junket than they would otherwise. She's been on recruitment tours on the past, knows how frenetic they are, how wearying the constant conversation, the lack of privacy.

Or perhaps those are the reasons she wants to go.

Ever since Nyota first caught his eye in his introductory xenolinguistics class, he's noted how outgoing she is, how comfortable she is in her own skin. He isn't the only one she puts at ease. Her classmates seek her out, turn to her as an unofficial liaison—or at least they did in his class, seeming to know that she was that rare fearless student who didn't mind engaging him in an argument when she thought the occasion called for it.

With a pang, he wonders if she finds him tiresome or is lonely in his company.

"If you and I were the only two going," he says, "then I would be willing."

"I see," she says, but her tone of voice is at odds with her words. She sounds confused, or more. Hurt.

He needs to say something but is at a loss. Finally he says, "I have offended you," and to his surprise, she shakes her head vehemently and says, "I'm not offended. But I think the trip is important. I don't know why you don't."

"I did not say I thought the trip was unimportant," Spock says, resting his hands together in front of him on the desk. "I said I did not wish to participate."

"Aren't you interested in recruiting good students?"

"Absolutely."

"Doesn't it worry you that enrollment is down?"

"It does."

"Don't you think the PR is worth the inconvenience of being away for a few days?"

At this he hesitates a beat before saying, "Perhaps," and she narrows her eyes at him.

"And wouldn't you like stopping at the shipyard to see the progress on the _Enterprise_?"

"I can see the holos of the construction any time I wish."

He hears her huff as she leans back in her chair.

"That's not the same as being right there! Not at all! The last time I was in Riverside, the ship was hardly more than a shell. By now some of the decks are open for tours. I want to actually walk through—"

"Then by all means you should go," Spock says, attempting to sound genuinely supportive, to strip any possessiveness from this voice.

But there it is, part of the reason he doesn't want to go. Nyota has spoken often and eloquently about her desire for a posting on the _Enterprise _when she graduates—and indeed, she's on course to graduate about the time the ship is fully operational. The odds are high that with her exemplary performance at the Academy, she will get that assignment.

The thought brings him unexpected pain.

"I _am_ going," she says, blinking up at him. "And I wish you would come, too. The last time I went barnstorming for Captain Pike, I met two Vulcan students and an Andorian who came to our information session. If you had been there—"

Against his will, he feels himself stiffen.

"Because I am a Vulcan."

"Yes," she says, leaning close again, draping her right hand across his wrist. "You are a role model, whether you like it or not."

"I have no control over how others perceive me," he says. Nyota looks at him sharply.

"What exactly are we talking about?" she says. "I just meant that it's nice to know someone who leads the way. Other young Vulcans would know it was possible to join Starfleet because they see that you were able to."

Her comment is so illogical that he doesn't bother to correct her. Any Vulcans interested in joining Starfleet already know it is possible. His personal history is irrelevant.

"And don't give me that look," she says, sliding her hand down until she twines their fingers together. She reaches up and places her palm under his other hand and suddenly she is there, in his mind, the bright edges of her thoughts flickering like fireflies against his somber musings.

A noise down the hall—and Nyota pulls her hand away abruptly, and with it, her presence in his mind.

Without a word she heads to her little work station in the corner, not looking up when he crosses the distance to the door and opens it chastely, safely, in case anyone should look in.

X X X X

As soon as Sarek came into the room, Amanda knew things had not gone well.

Until she didn't hear them, Amanda wasn't even aware that Sarek habitually entered a room with a suite of gestures and sounds that signaled his pleasure in her presence—a quickness to his step, a lightness to his breath, a swish of his cloak that meant he was hurrying forward almost swiftly enough to be undignified.

Not today. His tread was heavy, his breaths so ponderous that in anyone else she would have called them sighs.

His facial expression, too, gave him away. Although most humans that she knew characterized Vulcans as stone-faced, stoic, Amanda had never had any trouble reading Sarek. A slight quirk of his brow was as telling as a full-face frown in someone else. A narrowed, unfocused gaze meant he was deep in thought.

Today his brows were deeply furrowed, his eyes dark and brooding.

"Tell me," she said as he joined her on the sofa.

Instead of answering, he let his hands rest on his knees as he slowly looked around the small living room of Amanda's apartment. Forcing herself not to hurry him, Amanda said nothing more, letting the silence settle around them like a heavy blanket. In the distance a hover bus honked. A cloud raced across the sun, sending a shadow across the room.

Reaching across the distance, she slid her fingers around Sarek's hand. To her surprise, she felt nothing—not the electric tingle of his skin nor the tickling sensation she had come to associate with his mind touching hers.

That absence was so disorienting that she shivered. _He was shielding her from something._

"Tell me what happened," she said, more insistent.

"T'Pau objects," he said, looking up at last. "Not personally, but as the head of the clan. She foresees…issues…both with the bonding and the marriage."

To her horror, Amanda felt angry tears spring to her eyes. Letting go of Sarek's hand, she lifted her palms to her cheeks.

"But, why—"

"She is being logical, Amanda. It may not even be possible to achieve a successful bonding. As far as I know, no human and Vulcan have ever tried—"

At that Amanda lowered her hands and said, "That doesn't mean _we_ shouldn't!"

"I am simply reporting what T'Pau said," Sarek said. Although Amanda could hear the effort it took him to try to sound reasonable, rational, she felt a flash of irritation at him for not openly sharing her anger.

"So just because something _hasn't_ been done means it _shouldn't_ be!"

Sarek sat up a fraction and said, "Vulcans value tradition, Amanda. You know that. What you and I are proposing is…radical. That is why T'Pau anticipates objections from the Council. This is not a referendum about you personally—"

"I suppose I should find that comforting," Amanda said, crossing her arms. "It's not just me being rejected, but all of humanity."

The sarcasm in her voice wasn't helpful—she knew that. And for all his seeming equanimity, Sarek was upset, too—she knew that as well.

Still. It was maddening to have to get approval this way for something that should have been a personal matter. What about that so-called Vulcan value for privacy?

She sighed—a deep, loud human sigh that signaled both her exasperation and her aggravation.

"So," she said, "what do we do now?"

Blinking twice, Sarek tilted his head and said, "There is nothing to do. Other than wait for the Council to meet, of course."

Amanda felt herself flush hard.

"You're joking," she said flatly. "Just wait for T'Pau to tell the Council that she doesn't approve, and then wait for them to officially say no. And that's it. Nothing else."

"T'Pau will not express her reservations to the Council."

"You said she doesn't approve of our being bonded. That she isn't sure it will work. That we shouldn't be married—"

"I said that she is uncertain that we _can_ be bonded, and without that, the point about marriage is moot."

"Then let's find a healer and settle the matter," Amanda said with as much asperity as she could summon. "Why all this discussion about what might _not_ be possible?"

At once Sarek's expression clouded over, and Amanda said, "What? You aren't telling me everything,"

Sarek took a breath and folded his hands.

"Even if we find a healer," he said, "there's still the matter of the law."

Amanda shifted on the sofa and said, "Don't tell me that it's against the law for a Vulcan to marry a human."

She laughed at the absurdity of her statement, but Sarek's expression remained cloudy.

"You _are_ saying that," she said, astonished.

"Not precisely," he said, looking away.

"Then," she said, placing her hand on his arm, "what _precisely_ are you saying?"

For a moment he didn't answer and Amanda pressed forward.

"The law," Sarek said slowly, "says that marriage is between Vulcans. It does not include…anyone else."

With a _whump_, Amanda felt the air escape her lungs. Never had she even considered any legal hurdles in her relationship with Sarek. She felt nailed to her seat, overwhelmed.

They were willing to navigate so many other difficulties—cultural differences, physical limitations, social pressure—not to mention the ordinary tightrope every couple walked when finding a way to balance competing interests. All along the way they had encountered numerous Vulcan naysayers—colleagues and family whose reactions ranged from muted to openly skeptical. A legal stumbling block probably shouldn't have been a surprise, Amanda thought angrily.

"So even if we _can_ be bonded," she said, "we can't legally be married."

"Not as the law stands now, no."

"Then T'Pau's wasting her time even going to the Council."

At that Sarek shook his head.

"Not necessarily. The Council can amend the law—even expand it or invalidate it—if it is logical to do so."

Amanda felt her spirits brighten. _The law could be amended_. Surely the marriage law, like everything else on Vulcan, was ancient, established before first contact with Earth, before Vulcans even considered the possibility of other marriage partners. Her heart was hammering so hard that her next words came out more forcefully than she intended.

"Then T'Pau has to convince them!"

"My conclusion as well," Sarek said dryly, and for the first time since he arrived, Amanda saw a glimmer of humor in his countenance. "I have asked her to meet with us before she appears before the Council next week."

"So when—"

As if in reply to Amanda's interrupted question, the door chime rang.

"Now," Sarek said. "She's here in San Francisco to address a Federation subcommittee on agriculture, and she returns to Vulcan tomorrow morning. This is the only time she has free."

Leaping to her feet, Amanda rushed to open the front door. There standing on the porch was T'Pau, unattended, one hand bracing an ornate walking stick, the other lifted in the _ta'al_.

Returning the gesture, Amanda said, "Lady T'Pau. You honor me with your presence."

Amanda had met T'Pau several times before briefly, each time with the sensation that the elderly Vulcan found her vaguely amusing or eccentric, an attitude that made Amanda more self-conscious than she would have been if T'Pau had been frankly judgmental or austere.

Even Amanda's smallest actions felt clumsy in contrast to T'Pau's dignified demeanor. Nothing Amanda could say—no rehearsed formality, no sincere salutation—had the appropriate _gravitas_.

Sarek had assured her that T'Pau was more familiar with human behavior than most Vulcans, claiming several human companions and friends in her youth, but Amanda still felt awkward, even foolish, in her presence.

Now was no exception. Stumbling as she moved back, Amanda motioned for T'Pau to have a seat.

"Sarek," T'Pau said, nodding as she sat in the chair adjacent to the sofa where he stood, waiting. "You have apprised Ms. Grayson of the difficulties if you choose to proceed."

"I have."

"And you," she said, turning to where Amanda was settling herself on the edge of the sofa, "do you realize what you are asking?"

Amanda felt herself blush.

"I think so," she said. "We simply want to bond and marry—"

"It is not so simple," T'Pau said, cutting her off. "You are asking Vulcan society to change. You are asking the High Council to change the law. Neither is simple."

Amanda cut her eyes to Sarek. He was looking at her carefully, as if he was gauging her possible responses.

She felt such a mix of emotions that she wasn't sure how to respond. Anger, disappointment, dismay...even the beginnings of something akin to resignation. Maybe this _was_ all a waste of time.

Taking a breath, she said, "Then perhaps we shouldn't try."

Both Sarek and T'Pau seemed nonplussed by her answer—Sarek visibly so.

"Amanda—" he said, and she hurried on.

"I mean," she said, "we can always be married on Earth. Human marriage laws are more…progressive. Centuries ago we gave up defining which adults could and couldn't marry."

T'Pau raised an eyebrow and said, "Your marriage would not be recognized on Vulcan."

"Then we have nothing to lose," Amanda said, but T'Pau shook her head.

"As ambassador to Earth, Sarek is expected to uphold Vulcan traditions. Some on the Council might look unfavorably to his flaunting them this way."

"You mean they might recall him as ambassador?"

"A possibility," T'Pau said, and Amanda felt her face grow hot.

"Even if we are bonded first?" she asked, and T'Pau's expression grew distant.

"If you were a Vulcan, you could live together as a bonded couple before marriage. Then with marriage come the rules that govern property and the status of children. But you are not Vulcan, Ms. Grayson. As the humans say, that little detail is a _game changer_."

"Exactly!" Amanda said. "The fact that I'm a human is a little _detail_—a technicality. I'm a person as much as any Vulcan—a sentient being, with my own will. Surely the Council recognizes that."

T'Pau readjusted her heavy robe and glanced over at Sarek before answering.

"No one doubts your personhood," she said. "But the law is the law. Vulcans can only marry Vulcans."

"But laws can change," Amanda said, and Sarek added, "If we can convince the Council that doing so is logical."

"So you said," Amanda said, allowing some of her annoyance to show. At once she was abashed. Embarrassing Sarek this way in front of his clan matriarch wasn't called for. "Please forgive me," she said, lowering her eyes but keeping her body turned toward T'Pau. "I have let my emotions rule my words."

Darting a look at T'Pau, Amanda was heartened to see a flicker of approval in her face.

"What about you, Sarek?" T'Pau said suddenly. "You have chosen an alliance with a human. How do we convince the Council that a law that has stood the test of generations should be changed for you?"

"By saying," Sarek said without hesitation, "that the change is not for me but for all Vulcans. As members of the Federation, we accept humans as equal partners in interstellar governance. Why shouldn't they be acceptable partners in other ways as well? Infinite diversity in infinite combinations is not possible with the kinds of limits the current law dictates."

For the second time that day, Amanda felt her eyes water. She looked at Sarek gratefully and stopped herself at the last moment from reaching out to touch him.

Standing up from her chair, T'Pau leaned on her stick and said, "I will contact you after I meet with the Council."

Amanda started to speak but something in Sarek's posture warned her not to. Instead, she stood up when he did and followed T'Pau to the door.

"You are hopeful, then?" Sarek said as T'Pau made her way down the outside steps.

"I am always hopeful," she called back without turning around.

But her optimism was misplaced. By the end of the week T'Pau sent a terse one-word message to Sarek: "Denied."

"How could they?" Amanda said, stunned, so angry that she wasn't even close to tears this time.

"It may be irrelevant," Sarek said, crooking his arm tentatively around her shoulders as they sat side-by-side on the worn sofa in her apartment, "since I have been unable to find a healer willing to attempt our bonding."

And then, just like that, Amanda could see a future she neither wanted nor planned on—but one that stretched out like some terrible journey she had started down without a map.

She felt as helpless as she had as a small girl when her parents made some incomprehensible decision that affected her without her consent—decisions as silly and small as committing her to hated dance lessons, for instance, or decisions so large that the entire family was rocked by them. A quiet choice to hide her mother's alcoholism rather than seek treatment, for one. The inevitable divorce that followed, for another.

That same sense of being out of control threatened to bowl her over now.

"How can the Council make a decision about me without asking me how I feel?" she wailed, and then despite the seriousness of the situation, or perhaps because of it, she doubled over hiccuping in laughter.

Sarek was clearly alarmed.

"It's okay," Amanda said, sitting back upright, stifling her laugh. "It's what we do sometimes when we are overwrought—laughing this way—letting off some of the pressure."

"Then you are not amused?"

"Oh, it's amusing to think that the Council would care about my feelings. About anyone's feelings."

"That is not their task," Sarek said, still watching her closely. She ran her hand over her brow and nodded.

"It was a joke," she said. "I'm just…upset…that I don't have any say in what happens. That I have to depend on T'Pau to speak for me."

Something in Sarek's expression shifted suddenly, catching Amanda's attention.

"You wish to speak to the Council?" he said.

"I didn't know it was allowed."

"Anyone may address the Council," Sarek said. "As head of the clan, T'Pau functions as our speaker in most matters, but it is not required. If you like, I can petition for an audience for you."

"It's too late!" Amanda said. "They've already turned us down. What else can I possibly say to change their mind?"

"Uncertain," Sarek said. "But I know from experience that you can be very convincing in person."

Amanda snorted and pressed her palm into his.

"Besides," Sarek said, "to quote you, we have nothing to lose."

A week later when she and Sarek waited outside the meeting hall at the main government building in Shi'Kahr, Amanda tried to recall how resolved she had felt that day back in San Francisco, how buoyed by Sarek's words.

It was difficult. She was tired from the quick trip to Vulcan, wearied by the heat and the gravity and the spare, uncomfortable hostel room where she had spent the last night, Sarek decorously taking a room in a separate inn.

Even the clothes she was forced to wear made her bristle—the borrowed tunic itchy and stiff, the woven outer cloak so long that it dragged the floor and tripped her up if she wasn't careful.

When the attendant opened the thick ornate doors to the meeting room at last, she trailed Sarek by a few feet as he had coached her and let her gaze survey the Vulcans who held her fate—so to speak—in their hands.

There were six of them—four men and two women—all but one of them gray-haired and much older than Sarek. All were dressed in the same style of decorative garments embroidered with signets and what Amanda assumed were family crests.

They were sitting behind an irregularly-shaped table. No other furniture was in the room.

In spite of herself, Amanda felt a prickle of irritation at being made to stand throughout the interview. _A power ploy?_ She didn't doubt it.

"Sarek, son of Skon," the Vulcan looking to be the oldest said without preamble, "your clanswoman has already appeared before this Council with your request. Please explain why you feel it necessary to revisit this issue."

"It is the right of any citizen to address the Council," Sarek said, his voice unnaturally loud—something that Amanda recognized as nervousness. Her heart sped up.

"That does not answer the question," the Vulcan Councilor said.

"Then to clarify," Sarek said, "the issue T'Pau brought before you concerns not only myself but Amanda Grayson, and as T'Pau is not her head of clan, Ms. Grayson wishes to speak in her own behalf."

"The Council is not required to hear the petitions of non-citizens," the Councilor said.

Over tea and bread that morning, T'Pau had told Sarek that the vote to deny their petition to marry had not been unanimous, that at least one Councilor had argued in their favor.

"I have few specific details, but I suspect T'Pol was sympathetic," T'Pau said. "She lived for many years on Earth and worked as an adjunct member of Starfleet before returning home to work in the High Council. Her experience with humans is, therefore, extensive. That could be to your favor."

"Or not," Amanda had chimed in. She shrugged when both T'Pau and Sarek gave her the same look. "Well, not all humans are…_pleasant_…to know."

Now she locked her knees to keep them from shaking. She let her gaze sweep over the six Councilors sitting behind the table.

_That one, the woman with an almost imperceptible frown, her head canted in concentration. That must be T'Pol. _

"But if the Council wishes to have all of the necessary data before passing judgment," Amanda spoke up, directing her attention directly at T'Pol as she stepped forward, "you will agree to hear what I have to say."

There. She'd done it now. Unwilling to look up at Sarek, she kept her eyes straight ahead. Either they would throw her out for her audacity, or their curiosity would get the better of them and they might let her stay.

A moment passed, then two. Some unspoken signal rippled around the table and then the head of the Council said, "Very well. Speak."

Repressing a temptation to breathe a sigh of relief, Amanda took another step forward until her elbow almost brushed Sarek's.

"Thank you," she said, struggling to keep her voice from shaking. "I appreciate the chance to speak to you personally—"

"Understood," the chief Councilor said. "Please explain why you asked to be here."

Swallowing, Amanda said, "I know that Vulcan law requires couples who wish to marry to register with the High Council—"

Again the chief Councilor interrupted her.

"Ms. Grayson," he said, "our time is valuable. We know Vulcan law. What is your point?"

At her side Amanda felt Sarek shift his posture—though because she had chosen her opening salvo poorly or because the Councilor was being intentionally curt she wasn't sure. She glanced up at him quickly but his expression was unreadable, even to her.

"Sarek and I wish to marry—"

"This, too, is already known."

"—but because of the way Vulcan law is worded—"

"Ms. Grayson," the chief Councilor said, this time with an unmistakable hint of irritation in his tone, "you are wasting our time and your energy. As I indicated, we understand that the law prohibits your marriage to Sarek."

"But you can change the law—"

"That, too, is known. This Council finds no compelling reason to do so. You and Sarek do not need to be married to cohabit if that is your wish."

Amanda felt an upwelling of frustration.

"But marriage is more than cohabiting," she said. "Married partners have certain rights and privileges under the law that other couples do not share. Property protections, for instance. The power to make medical decisions for each other when necessary."

"Contractual law allows anyone to set up such arrangements outside of marriage," one of the other Councilors said.

"What about children?" Amanda said. "Married couples share responsibility and custody of their children. Unmarried couples don't under current law."

"That hardly seems a concern for you," the chief Councilor added, and Amanda flushed.

In fact, he had touched on the subject that caused her the most friction with Sarek—not just whether or not they _could_ have children, but whether they _should_. His forced estrangement from Sybok played into his ambivalence, of course. Sarek was adamant that he would not father another child who was not also his under the law.

"It is already a concern," Amanda said. "Sarek and I want to make a home his son can share."

Another wave of unspoken communication rippled around the room and Amanda let out a breath.

"Sarek's son has a home," the other Vulcan woman said, and Amanda nodded.

"But not with his only living parent," she said. "As it is now, Sarek has little time with him—"

"That is a matter between Sarek and his son's family. Not you," the Vulcan woman said.

Amanda began to feel the first real inkling of panic. Whatever she had imagined she would be able to do to convince the Council to change their ruling, she was failing miserably. How pointless it was to try to outlogic a Vulcan…an exercise in futility. She felt her heartbeat in her throat.

"If you have nothing else to say," the chief Councilor said, and Amanda looked up again at Sarek. His expression was still unreadable, a blank that frightened her more than anything else that morning.

"Ms. Grayson."

T'Pol, speaking for the first time. Amanda blinked and turned toward her.

"Why _Sarek_? I understand why someone might seek the legal protections of marriage law. What I do not understand is why you wish to marry _this_ man? When this arrangement offers so many obstacles, why not find a more suitable partner?"

For a moment Amanda wasn't sure she had heard her correctly. She blinked again and shook her head.

"I…do not wish to find someone else. My…regard…my love…my respect for him…it isn't something I can transfer to someone else. It comes from our interactions with each other, from our shared interests and experiences."

She knew she was babbling, was speaking of her emotions in a way that made even Sarek uncomfortable when she did it so openly. Well, there was no help for it. She didn't know any other way to answer T'Pol's question.

Which, she realized with a jolt, might be T'Pol's intent.

If Amanda knew anything, she knew that the stereotype of Vulcans as stoic, emotionless people was just that, a stereotype based on popular perception rather than reality. Under the surface they were as passionate as the most demonstrative humans...or more so, according to Sarek. Perhaps T'Pol was guiding her to abandon logic and appeal to that sensibility.

"But you heard what the chief Councilor said," T'Pol said. "You and Sarek can live together unmarried. That does not require amending the law."

"It is out of my respect for both Vulcan law and tradition that I ask you to amend it," Amanda said. "Sarek and I want to be husband and wife not just in the eyes of the law but in the eyes of the Vulcan people. To raise his son. Perhaps to have our own children. To support each other through difficulties. To celebrate each other's successes. To do all the things that you do without anyone calling our relationship into question—"

She stopped abruptly, unable to go on.

To her surprise, she felt Sarek step so closely to her that his robe brushed her hand.

"If that is all, you may retire," the chief Councilor said, "while we deliberate."

Still unable to speak, Amanda nodded quickly and waited as Sarek lead the way back through the ornate doors of the meeting room.

He continued on down the corridor to a small waiting area with several chairs and tables. On a sideboard sat a ceramic teapot and several typical Vulcan mugs without handles. Sarek motioned toward them but Amanda shook her head. Even though her mouth felt hot and dry, she was sure she would choke if she tried to drink anything.

In a moment she heard footsteps in the corridor. Could the Councilors be finished already? And if they were, was that a good sign or not?

She turned to face the door.

T'Pau stepped in slowly, leaning on her walking stick. She stretched out her hand to Sarek and gave him a slip of parchment.

"For you," she said. "From T'Pol. The name of a healer who can help you."

Over her shoulder as she headed back down the corridor, she said, "And if you want me to officiate at the wedding, you must make haste. I will be traveling off planet soon. My daughter on the Caelerian outpost has a new child I want to see."

X X X X

Spock stretches out on the sofa, one hand trailing the ground, the other twisting a small, circular rubber ring in his fingers, one of Nyota's hair bands, found between the cushions. Rolling it over his thumb, Spock lifts it in front of his face and holds it up to the light. One coiled sprig of hair is trapped in the red threads of the band.

It evokes an odd sensation—loneliness? Longing? Regret that after their conversation this morning, he and Nyota had no time to talk further. Instead, he had headed to his advanced computer programming seminar; she left to pack for the recruitment junket.

He sets the thought aside and sits up.

With a practiced motion, he moves quickly to the small desk in the corner of the room, tabbing on the subspace transceiver. On most Mondays he calls home—a concession he makes to his mother. Normally he waits until mid-afternoon Vulcan time, but his mother is, in all likelihood, home if he calls now, two hours early.

He doesn't want to alarm her, but he feels a need to hear her voice, particularly since he's lain here immobile for part of the afternoon, replaying her favorite story in his head, like watching a theater piece put on for his benefit alone.

As he expects, she reads more into the timing of his call than is warranted. She peers out from the monitor with a concerned expression on her brow.

"Has something happened?" she says by way of greeting. "Are you okay?"

"I had time and opportunity to call right now," he says, but she tilts her chin and gives him a look that means she doesn't believe him. He almost sighs.

"Why?" she says. "Are you going somewhere later?"

"I am going nowhere," he says, looking down at the hair band still around his thumb. When he looks back up, his mother's expression hasn't changed.

"I was invited to accompany a recruitment tour for the next three days," he says, "but I declined."

At that his mother's face softens and she grins.

"What a homebody you've become," she says. "Just like your father."

"Father travels frequently," Spock says. "In fact, he is away more than he is at home."

"That doesn't mean he wouldn't rather be here," Amanda says, laughing. "For all your vaunted curiosity, you Vulcans are just as happy in your own back yard."

They finish their conversation shortly afterwards—but rather than being soothed or settled, it leaves him feeling more restless than ever.

He's never understood what his mother means when she uses the term _homesick_, has never missed his parents in the way she describes missing her sister, her nieces and nephews. Even in those first baffling months at the Academy several years ago, he hadn't wished to be back on Vulcan, back in his familiar room, his familiar routine.

Yet now he feels an unaccountable emptiness that seems to fit her description, as if his attention has been hijacked against his will, leaving him scattered and discontented.

_Meditation, then._

He settles on the floor in front of his _asenoi_, willing himself to focus on the flickering light, on the faint heat he feels radiating from it. Slowing his breathing and calming his heartbeat, he concentrates on letting go of any sensations.

The gentle mechanical hum of the cooler in the kitchen down the hall…he acknowledges it and then lets it go.

The distant sound of traffic. Gone.

The rub of the carpet on his exposed ankle. He feels it and then blocks it. The whiffle of air from the exchanger overhead fades away.

Closing his eyes, he tries to sink below the first level of consciousness.

An image of Nyota swims before him—the way she had parted her lips as if to say one last thing before she walked across the commons earlier, her hand raised in farewell.

Opening his eyes, he looks down at his own hand, the red band still between his thumb and forefinger. He stands and douses the useless _asenoi_, already planning how he will explain his change of plans to Dean Richardson, listing what he needs to take for three days away, calculating how fast he needs to walk to make it to the transport station where even now she is probably watching, waiting.

**A/N: Another little change up in the plan, this time because Spock doesn't actually tell anyone Amanda's story but comforts himself by remembering it. I hope that wasn't confusing!**

**If you aren't an "Enterprise" viewer, you might not know T'Pol…she served on the first Enterprise with Captain Archer and crew and became romantically involved with the ship's engineer, Trip Tucker. She occasionally drifts through my stories.**

**That red hair band, too, appears again when Amanda finds it in Spock's bed in "The Interview."**

**Thanks to everyone who continues to read this story, and double thanks for those kind souls who take the time to review!**


	11. Rhyme and Reason

**Chapter 11: Rhyme and Reason**

**Disclaimer: I just play here. **

_The dream._

It starts, as it always does, with the explosion.

The sonic grenade rocks the conference building and people in the large banquet hall are tossed out of their chairs screaming. Glass breaks. Somewhere in the distance a siren wails.

Particles of plaster begin drifting down from the ceiling, and once again Spock recalls a singular snowstorm he witnessed as a child, standing in the middle of his grandmother's backyard in Seattle, his head tilted up to trace the progress of spiraling, whirling individual flakes until his neck ached; shivering, runny-nosed with chill until his mother insisted that he come inside. The rest of the afternoon he sat at the window watching the snow collecting in watery clumps. By the next morning it was gone.

Another explosion, and there is Captain Pike, his hands upraised as the five attackers burst through the double doors, their weapons aimed at the crowd of Feynman Conference attendees.

"Are you in charge?" Captain Pike says over the shouts and moans of the crowd, corralling the attention of the attackers. Spock watches as the captain inches forward.

"Don't move!" one man yells, and Pike stops and lowers his hands.

"Listen," Pike says, gently waving to indicate the crowd around him, "if you want to have your say, you need to let these people go first."

Spock feels himself take a step forward, parting the crowd with his shoulder, sidling past a woman holding her hand to her bleeding cheek, skirting an overturned table, scuffing one boot against a tray on the ground.

Captain Pike looks up as the tray skitters a few inches—drawn to the noise in a way that Spock later finds remarkable.

Looking up at the same moment, Spock meets the captain's gaze.

And in that moment he knows exactly what Captain Pike wants to him to—as if Pike had shouted across the room to him. The communion is as electric as it is unmistakable.

"I've already had my say," the attacker yells. "Now I want action! We're tired of talking. We want—"

By this time Spock has circled behind the shouting man, and in two more steps he is able to reach out and press his thumb and forefinger on the nerve running through the man's trapezius.

As he always does, the attacker falls to the ground, and Captain Pike rushes the second attacker and wrestles a firearm from him.

And at that moment Spock knows—again—that one of the other men has armed a sonic grenade and dropped it into the middle of the milling crowd.

_There is no choice, not really._

Scooping up the grenade, Spock hurtles past the people at the door and makes his way into the corridor.

A large window at the end of the hall is his first destination, but through the glass he sees people standing in the conference courtyard—more Earth United protestors like the attackers inside. If he throws the grenade there, they will be hurt or killed.

Three doors loom to the right—two ornate wooden ones and a metal service area entrance—and Spock weighs his choices, which one will have the fewest people behind it, which one will contain the impending explosion and protect the large crowd beginning to exit the banquet hall behind him.

"Give it to me," he hears a voice say, and he pivots around and sees a young Vulcan man standing in the haze of the smoky corridor.

Turel—his thin wrists stretching out the end of his sleeves, his hair cut unevenly across his brow—and suddenly Spock knows that this time the dream is different, that this time it is not, as the healer suggested, just a normal reaction to the trauma of the bombing at the Feynman Conference several months ago—his mind forcing him to relive it, to work through the emotions that still, if he is honest, roil underneath the surface every time he hears about the upcoming trial of the attackers.

Which, he realizes with a start, is why the frequency and intensity of the dreams have increased lately. He and Captain Pike are scheduled to testify in the first of several pre-trial hearings in The Hague this week.

And it is why Turel is here now, in the dream, when Spock has neither seen him nor thought about him for years.

…Until yesterday when his mother called with the news that his old schoolmate Turel was listed as a passenger on the Vulcan merchant ship that went missing two days ago in the Adriana nebula.

His fevered imagination has cobbled the two events together the way dreams sometimes do.

"Give it to me," Turel says, pointing to the grenade. "I'm already lost."

For a moment Spock looks down at his hands, his fingers curled around the dull metal of the grenade, the countdown screen blinking, his own heartbeat so loud that that all other noise is washed away—

"Hurry!" Turel says, and as he did during the actual attack two months ago, Spock fills in the calculus of gain and loss, the probability that he can buy the safety of the people in the building with his own death—feels again the sorrow of leaving Nyota, thinks of the pain his mother will feel, and his father—

"I'm already lost," Turel says again, reaching for the grenade, and Spock considers how logical, how reasonable, it would be to give it to him, to let him carry it, cradling it in his arms like fragile china, ready to muffle the explosion with his own body—

He wills his hands to rise, to place the grenade in Turel's outstretched fingers, but he is unable to move—

With a gasp, he wakes.

Nyota is curled in the bed beside him, asleep, her hands tucked under her chin.

0124. He needs to rouse her so she can get back to her dorm before too much later.

He hadn't intended to fall asleep—is frankly surprised that he has. _His exhaustion, then._ Grading the entrance exams for new recruits has been more tiring than he imagined it would be, particularly since he has reread the young Russian applicant's tests twice, searching for the key to the unique answers there.

Unique and wrong, but fascinating. Clearly the young man is intelligent, even gifted—but his written explanations are a shambles, his Standard so garbled that twice Spock has asked Nyota to help decipher the meaning.

He looks over at her now, the way her breathing is slow and steady, untroubled. If he mentions the dream to her—tells her that it shatters his rest more frequently now that the pre-trial hearings are on the news vids almost daily—she will take his pain on as her own—that peculiar human trait that both endears her to him and makes him more cautious when they speak.

As if she can sense his thoughts, she blinks twice and is awake, her hand darting out almost immediately to touch him.

"What are you doing?" she says sleepily, and almost as a reflex, he slides his fingers onto hers, letting his mood slip across their link.

"What's happened?" she says, pushing herself upright on one elbow. For a moment he considers deflecting her question but it's too late. He should have been more careful.

"An old friend," he says, "or rather, a classmate. Turel. He was on the _Soran_."

"That Vulcan ship that was destroyed?"

"Disappeared," Spock corrects her. "Though in all likelihood, destroyed. My mother told me yesterday that his name was on the manifest."

Nyota is peering at him intently, her expression troubled, so he isn't surprised at her next question.

"Were you close?"

"Somewhat close in age," he says, knowing that is not what she is asking. He hurries on. "Turel was four years ahead of me in school, but we shared few interests. Sometimes he came to our house for tutoring, though in the end it did him little good."

"What do you mean?"

"Turel found school…challenging. Although he claimed he had no aptitude for most academic subjects, I believe his lack of interest was his real handicap. As a poet, he was exceptional. Or could have been, had he been allowed to continue his education."

Nyota lowers her head to the pillow and pulls the heavy duvet up around her shoulders.

"This sounds like a story that needs to be told," she says, and he pauses, considering.

_Is it?_ Is that why Turel has resurfaced after all this time in his dreams? What was it the healer had told him the last time he saw her? That dreams were a way to deal with unresolved emotions?

On one hand it would be a relief to put his musings into words, to share them with Nyota. On the other hand, he doesn't want to burden her.

"Well?" she says, tugging his arm until he slides back down under the duvet beside her, resting his arm across her waist.

"It is late," he says, "and the story is long."

"It's not that late—" she protests, but he tilts his head to contradict her. "Well, okay, it's late, but I'm not tired."

"You are certain?"

"Hurry up already," she says, laughing, and he does.

X X X X X X

"K'hlor T'nia Turel," Stonn said loudly one afternoon on the exercise yard. "Look at me when I address you."

From the corner of the swept dirt rectangle that served as the sparring ring for the boys studying _suus mahna_, Spock watched Stonn advance toward Turel. Shorter than Turel and stockier, Stonn clenched his fists as he walked, reminding Spock of a belligerent Terran canine. Three of his friends followed a few feet behind him.

Around the yard, children paused in their conversations and turned to where Turel stood, his arms at his side, his expression impassive.

"What do you require?" Turel said evenly.

Glancing around, Stonn said, "The district-wide school comparisons have been posted. If we did not have to average in your performance, we would have been ranked top tier. As it is, our standing fell this term because of you."

"You have not answered my query," Turel said. "What do you require?" Murmurs of agreement—or amusement—rippled through the crowd. Spock began moving to the edge of the practice yard.

Stonn heard them as well. Raising his fist a fraction, he took another step toward Turel.

"What I require is that you leave this school."

"I assure you," Turel said, sounding reasonable and cool, "that nothing would please me more. However," he said, looking past Stonn's shoulder to the group of children in the yard, "you do not have the authority to ask me to leave."

Even from where he stood, Spock could see Turel's expression shift from neutral to something far more complex, more _mischievous_.

"However," the taller boy added, leaning forward as if to impart some quiet secret, "_you _could leave and enroll in a school that would better appreciate your contributions."

The wave of murmurs in the crowd grew louder. As Stonn rushed forward toward Turel, Spock turned toward the exit and saw Master Kisar entering the enclosure, carrying two practice _lirpas _with blunted blades.

"What does this mean?" the Vulcan _suus mahna_ instructor asked, his voice rising above the noise in the yard. The scuffle in the corner died at once.

"Turel," Master Kisar said, "explain."

Lowering his gaze, Turel said, "A misunderstanding, Teacher."

Master Kisar looked around at Stonn and his circle.

"Very well," he said, handing Turel one of the practice _lirpas. _"Choose your sparring partner and begin."

No one moved. Here was Turel's chance to humiliate the bully who made Spock's and so many other children's lives miserable. With a _lirpa_ in hand, a taller opponent had a decided advantage—everyone knew that.

Stonn evidently did, too. In the pale afternoon sunlight, he blanched.

"Stivak," Turel said, naming an older boy Spock didn't know well.

Spock's disappointment was almost palpable.

Stonn flashed an unmistakable look of triumph to the boys who followed him to the outer ring of the yard to observe.

The bullying, Spock knew, would continue.

Of course it had, against anyone who stood out in any way—not just from Stonn, and not so blatantly—but a persistent, wearying, enforced conformity that too few Vulcans questioned.

Indeed, the first time Spock heard the Earth maxim "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down," he was astonished that it had not originated on Vulcan.

His own reasons for being bullied were clear. Turel's were less so.

Tall and thin and from a family of agricultural workers, Turel was oddly self-contained compared to other 12-year-olds, seemingly unconcerned by the fact that his school uniform was worn, his hair disheveled, his parents absent during the ordinary quarterly assemblies to showcase the children's achievements.

In the lecture and debate classes he often faltered when called on, was remiss about completing assignments, and once was widely rumored to have fallen asleep at his desk. In the individualized learning spheres he moved slowly and deliberately through the assigned curriculum until he was doing the same lessons as Spock, despite being four years older.

That was when Amanda came into the picture.

Her work as an educator was usually more supervisory than practical, mentoring a group of trainee teachers each year, observing them as they taught in the research school and meeting regularly with them to discuss their pedagogical progress.

When Turel failed his second advanced calculus class, however, the headmaster at his school approached Amanda about finding a tutor for him.

One evening at dinner she broached the subject with Sybok, who at 16 was close to graduating, asking if he would be willing to spend several afternoons a week with Turel.

"You can meet here if it's more comfortable," she said. From across the table, Spock watched as Sybok dipped his spoon into the _fori_ stew and took a careful bite.

For a moment Spock was afraid that Sybok would refuse his mother outright, offended somehow, or annoyed, perhaps leaving again for another extended stay with his aunt and his grandmother. Almost eight, Spock had lived with Sybok less time than they had lived apart.

As intuitive as Spock was about math—as easily as he picked it up and felt comfortable with it—Sybok was more so, filling old-fashioned parchment notebooks with his careful, detailed equations, diagrams, and original theorems. More than one mathematics instructor had urged him to spend his final year of school specializing in number theory, but Sybok had resisted, taking instead a wide range of subjects Spock heard Sarek dismiss as _trivial._

"Music has mathematical applications," Sarek said, "but speculative fiction serves no purpose other than to distract you from your studies."

Sybok hadn't argued—but he hadn't agreed, either, and Spock sometimes overheard his mother and Sybok discussing the literature he was reading for school.

Sybok set his spoon down on the lip of his bowl as Amanda leaned forward slightly at the table.

"If you'd rather not—" she said, sounding disappointed, and Sybok shifted in his seat and glanced up at her. Before he could reply, however, Sarek spoke.

"Sybok needs to spend his free time preparing his application," he said. It was a topic that came up regularly—Sybok's apparent unwillingness to navigate the complexities of the Vulcan Science Academy application. More than once Sarek had spoken so sharply to his older son that Spock had retreated to his room, shutting the door against the brewing argument.

The mood around the dining table grew uneasy.

"I will speak to Turel tomorrow," Sybok said, looking up at Amanda. She darted a glance at Sarek. For an instance Spock saw annoyance darken his father's expression.

"Very well," he said, and Amanda nodded at Sybok.

"And maybe you can get started on your application in the meantime?"

Picking his spoon back up, Sybok quirked one corner of his mouth and said, "For you, absolutely."

Spock looked away quickly, but not before he saw the hurt in his father's face.

By the next week Turel was a regular fixture in the afternoons, either walking home with Sybok and Spock on the days when Amanda had the hovercar or catching a ride when Sybok was allowed to fly. On those latter occasions when Turel was with them, Spock noticed a decided increase in risk-taking on Sybok's part—sudden accelerations and spins, and once, a heady dash toward a large rock outcropping that made Spock gasp and Turel whoop out loud.

By some unspoken complicity, neither Turel nor Spock chastised Sybok for it nor mentioned it to anyone. If the truth were told, Spock realized later, he had found the danger stimulating. Worrisome, of course, but an undeniable rush.

The tutoring sessions themselves were quiet, steady, even boring—at least from Spock's point of view. Once he had finished his own school work, he would wander through the kitchen where Turel sat at the table, Sybok at his elbow prompting him through a series of lessons Spock himself could have taught. When Amanda was home she made tea and insisted that the boys stop for snacks, something she rarely did when Turel wasn't there.

"It's just that I don't know how much he gets to eat at home," she explained when Spock asked her about it. "He's much too thin."

That anyone might not get as much to eat as required was a mystifying idea. Surely his mother was mistaken.

On the first cold morning of winter when a hard frost covered the ground like furry lichen, Spock saw his mother do something else as surprising.

"I have a meeting this afternoon at the university," she told him as she served his breakfast, "so I want you to give this to Turel when he gets here."

On the sideboard she placed a folded cloak, one of Sybok's older ones. Spock recognized it at once, despite the fact that someone—presumably his mother—had removed the decorative family signet that normally scrolled down the front lapels.

"What's this doing here?" his mother asked that night when she came home and saw the cloak still on the sideboard. Sarek had already finished his evening soup and retired to his study, but Sybok and Spock lingered at the table—their half-eaten meal a silent referendum on their father's cooking.

Picking up the cloak, Amanda held it in front of her and said, "I told you to give this to Turel when he came for tutoring this afternoon. Did something happen?"

From the corner of his eye, Spock saw Sybok look pointedly down at the table_. An evasion?_ Spock couldn't imagine why.

"Turel was already wearing a cloak," Spock said promptly. "I saw no need for him to have another."

"That wasn't your decision to make!" Amanda said, an unmistakable note of anger in her voice. "Turel's cloak is too small for someone his height, and it's too torn to be mended."

"But Mother," Spock said, baffled, "this cloak belongs to Sybok."

"He has two others!" Amanda said. "He doesn't mind giving this one away!"

She gathered up the cloak in her arms and stormed out of the kitchen. Spock turned to Sybok for an explanation.

"You should have done what she told you, little brother," Sybok said, shrugging his shoulders. "Now you and I are both in _hot water_."

This was one of Amanda's metaphors that had inadvertent comical overtones for Vulcans who were almost never too hot and for whom water was a luxury—but rather than being amused as he usually was when Sybok used it, Spock frowned.

"You did nothing wrong," he said, sliding his fingers around his bowl as he stood up. "I will tell Mother that the fault was mine alone."

Sybok's hand snaked out and grabbed Spock's tunic playfully, almost causing him to drop his soup bowl.

"Do not worry yourself," Sybok said, meeting Spock's eyes before letting him go. It was the kind of tussle—and the reassuring words—that Spock missed most when Sybok was away too long at his aunt's house.

In some part of his brain, Spock was always bracing himself for the moments—irregular and unwanted—when he would pass by Sybok's room and see him packing for an extended stay with his mother's family.

And Spock flinched—not physically, but psychologically, emotionally—whenever the tensions between his brother and his father surfaced, the discord in the family bond like a gnawing, relentless pain in his chest.

If his mother was angry, too—would Sybok decide to leave for good? The thought was too much to bear.

In spite of Sybok's words, Spock walked down the corridor to his mother's bedroom and tapped lightly at her door.

It opened at once, his mother still holding the folded cloak.

"I apologize," Spock said, using the phrase Sybok had taught him to say when Amanda showed visible signs of being irritated. "Please forgive me."

And also as Sybok had coached him, he looked down at the ground for a beat before daring to lift his gaze.

To his relief, his mother seemed mollified. He heard her sigh and she reached out to ruffle his hair, something he tolerated with as good a grace as he muster rather than give her reason to take offense again.

"I know this is hard to understand," she began, and Spock was suddenly wary, alerted by the distress in her tone, "but Turel doesn't have all the advantages you have. We have a responsibility to help him when we can."

Frowning, Spock said, "But Turel's parents are responsible for him, not you and Father."

Amanda sighed and stepped over to the bed, perching on the edge and motioning to him to sit beside her.

"That's true," she said. "But if you know that Turel is going hungry because his parents either can't or won't feed him, would you refuse him something to eat if you had something to share? Or that extra cloak? Through no fault of his own, Turel has to wear a cloak that doesn't fit him. I don't know why. But for me it doesn't matter. He needs one and we have an extra. The kind thing—the _moral_ thing—to do is to include him in our circle of concern."

Spock said nothing, not willing to upset his mother again. She wasn't speaking logically or even just emotionally, but with a conviction and forcefulness that was puzzling.

The next afternoon when Turel sat with Sybok struggling to solve what anyone could see was a simple derivative, Spock pulled out a platter of sliced _kaasa_ and set it on the table. Sybok sent some message with his eyes, though Spock wasn't quite sure what it was. _Surprise?_ No, _approval_.

"If you are still hungry," Spock said to Turel, "there is more in the cooler."

An odd expression flashed across Turel's normally placid face.

"I am not in need of sustenance," he said, his cheeks flushing.

"My mother says that you exhibit signs of being underweight," Spock said. To his astonishment, Turel stood up so suddenly that his chair flipped over backward. Without a word he rushed from the kitchen. A moment later, the front door slammed.

When Amanda arrived home later that afternoon, Spock met her at the door and recounted what had happened.

"You embarrassed him," she said as she put away the groceries she carried in. "I know you meant well, but you offended his dignity."

"But if he needs food," Spock argued, "he should be willing to accept it."

"Food is only part of what he needs," she said, handing Spock some asparagus-like vegetables to place in the stasis unit. "He also needs to be treated with respect."

"I was not disrespectful," Spock said, shocked at his mother's suggestion. He began to feel a tendril of resentment toward Turel—it was concern for his well-being, after all, that had gotten Spock in trouble.

"No," Amanda said, pausing long enough to look at him closely, "I know you weren't."

That night after the evening meal, she came into Spock's room where he was reclining on his bed reading and said, "I have a job for you."

Usually what his mother called a _job_ was some bit of housework that she could have performed on her own if so inclined—watering the garden, dusting the sitting room—so Spock set his reader down and prepared to stand up. His mother stopped him with a wave of her hand.

"No," she said, "stay there. I need you to think of something Turel does better than anyone else—"

She held her hand up as he started to protest that Turel, in fact, did nothing well at all, much less better than his peers.

"Everyone has something they do well. Just because you don't know what it is doesn't mean Turel doesn't excel at something," she said. "You figure out what."

"That will require observing him closely," Spock said, and his mother said, "Exactly," as she left his room, shutting the door behind her.

Observing Turel was harder than Spock thought it would be. They shared no lecture sessions together, and most of the time Turel worked alone in a practice sphere. Master Kisar had recently pulled out the 7 and 8 year olds for additional physical training before their upcoming _kahs-wans_, leaving Turel and Stonn and the older children to organize their own sparring matches.

That left only the mid-day break—and although most of the children chose to eat and socialize then, Spock usually played chess with the elderly grandmaster, Truvik, or wandered alone in the herbarium. Occasionally he ran into Turel outside in the garden, and sure enough, the next day he found the older boy there sitting on a bench, a PADD and stylus in his hand.

"I wish to apologize for upsetting you yesterday," Spock said, dimly aware that Turel might be further insulted by being called out being _upset_, for exhibiting emotion. Turel, however, looked unconcerned.

"I was not upset," he said, returning his attention to his PADD. It was such a fabrication that for a moment, Spock wasn't sure how to proceed. Should he refute the obvious lie? Or would it be better to pretend that he believed it, as a way to avoid embarrassing Turel further?

But wouldn't such a pretense be a lie in itself?

As Spock faltered, not knowing what to say, Turel glanced back up at him.

"Or to be more precise," Turel said, "I am not upset now. Do not concern yourself further."

Again Spock paused. His mother had declared Turel part of her circle of concern—which required action on his part, no matter what Turel said.

"Then you will resume the tutorials with Sybok?" he asked, and Turel nodded.

Feeling a rush of relief, Spock said, "My mother will be glad," to which Turel gave him an odd look.

Turning to head back to the school building, Spock stopped and said, "Would you care for a game of chess? Master Truvik keeps a set in his office."

Again the odd expression Spock couldn't identify rippled across Turel's face—not quite a scowl but close enough to put Spock on guard.

Then just as suddenly, Turel's eyes brightened and he said, "You would not want to play chess with me. I am quite deficient in that area."

"Indeed," Spock said, and then seeing an opportunity to follow his mother's instructions, he hurried on. "What _are_ you skilled at doing?"

This time Turel looked amused.

"I am not skilled at much," he said, and Spock said, "My mother says everyone is skilled at something."

"Your mother—" Turel began, and Spock felt his heart leap into his throat. He knew what the other boys said about his mother when they were sure he would overhear them. He couldn't imagine what they said about her when he was out of their hearing. Unconsciously he clenched his fists at his side.

"—has the most interesting ideas," Turel said.

_Did she?_ Spock had never thought about it before. Even now he had trouble seeing her objectively, as anyone other than the woman who both exasperated him and soothed him, often in the same moment.

"She is just a teacher," Spock said, and Turel narrowed his gaze, hunched his shoulder, and turned back to his PADD, blocking Spock from his field of vision.

A dismissal, clearly, though Spock couldn't see what he had done to deserve it.

The next day he tried again. As he had the day before, Turel sat under a small tree at the far end of the garden. When Spock walked up, Turel glanced up briefly and then continued writing on his PADD.

Asking Turel directly about his abilities had not gotten him the information his mother requested. Another approach was called for.

"Are you doing school work?" he asked, and Turel shook his head but didn't look up. "May I inquire as to what you_ are_ doing?"

Because he was watching him so carefully, Spock saw something he would have missed otherwise. Turel closed his eyes briefly before looking back at Spock—almost as if he was calling on some inner resource before he spoke. When he did speak, his words were characteristically slow and deliberate.

"You would not find it interesting," Turel said.

Spock was at a loss as to how to respond. Turel didn't know him well enough to be able to judge what he would and would not find interesting. He told Turel so.

"Very well," Turel said. "Although I will be surprised if I am wrong. Here."

With a sudden motion, he handed the PADD to Spock. Tilting the screen to minimize the glare from the overhead sunlight, Spock saw a slender row of words written in Turel's spidery scrawl.

"A poem," Spock said in sudden understanding. Turel nodded and Spock looked back to the PADD, reading.

"It is a description of the desert," Spock said in a moment, handing the PADD back to Turel.

"Is that all?" Turel said, the same mischievous look on his face Spock had noted the afternoon Stonn goaded him in the exercise yard.

"There are 26 words arranged in nine lines."

Turel didn't bother to hide his amusement.

"You counted them!"

Faintly Spock felt that Turel was gently mocking him, that he was missing some critical piece of information. That the poem was a description of the desert was self-evident. It mentioned heat, wilted plants, a dry riverbed, thirst.

He gave Turel a quizzical look.

"It is a poem, Spock," Turel said with the same measured tone the teachers used with the slowest students. Spock was mortified. "It speaks of many things at once."

"That is neither logical nor efficient," Spock said quickly. "And it could lead to misunderstanding."

"It is not an equation," Turel said. "It can have more than one meaning and still be correct."

That evening as his mother was preparing to retire to her bedroom, Spock told her about the confusing conversation with Turel. After he recited Turel's poem for her, Amanda was quiet—either because she was thoughtful or distressed; Spock wasn't sure which.

Finally she sighed and said, "It's a very good poem, but a sad one," and Spock resisted the urge to ask her to explain. Sometimes when his mother was quiet this way, she became irritated with him when he talked.

Sybok wasn't much help, either. When Spock recited the poem for him and told him that Amanda had pronounced it sad, Sybok agreed.

"But it is about the desert," Spock protested, to which Sybok said, "It is about Turel."

"Spock tells me that you are a gifted poet," Amanda said the next time Turel came to the house for a tutorial. She darted a warning glance at Spock just as he was about to contradict her. Turel looked up in surprise at her words, blinking and glancing down at the cup of tea she placed in front of him. "I would enjoy reading some of your poems," she added, and Spock saw Turel blink again.

"Spock is mistaken," Turel said. "I am not a good poet."

"Spock is rarely mistaken about anything," Amanda said, grinning at Spock to let him know he was being chaffed. "But why don't you let me read them so I can decide for myself."

From then on whenever Turel came over in the afternoons, Amanda made a point of being home, ready with a snack for the boys, taking time to chat with Turel about his day, reading his poetry and making suggestions.

At some level Spock found her attention to Turel—or rather, the loss of her attention to him—annoying, something he hardly confessed to himself.

Not long afterwards, Sybok and his father quarreled so bitterly that Sybok left home for good, abandoning any plans to apply to the VSA. For weeks the family grieved, individually and collectively, like people in shock, which, of course, they were.

At first Amanda tried to press Spock into tutoring Turel but his instruction was perfunctory, his resentment of Turel barely contained. Soon Turel dropped out of the sessions and then out of school, saying his parents needed him on their farm.

And that was the last time Spock thought about him—until his mother called with the news that Turel had been a passenger on the _Soran_ when it disappeared into the Adriana nebula, everyone aboard presumed lost.

X X X X

"How very sad," Nyota says as Spock finishes his story, tracing her finger along his arm, apparently unaware of the effect her touch has on him. He rolls to the side to hide his arousal and says, "0157."

"I know," she sighs, slipping out of the bed and bending down to pick up her hastily discarded uniform. With another sigh she tugs on the high-necked sweater and slides her arms into the jumper.

With a start he realizes that he has been lying immobile, watching her, instead of dressing so he can walk her back across campus.

As she zips up her boots he dresses quickly and is ready by the time she is at the door.

"You don't have to," she says, and for a moment he considers. She's certainly capable of walking herself back to her dorm safely—and not just because the campus is enclosed. When the corps' physical training competition results were posted last week, Nyota scored third in the overall fitness assessments.

If he stays here in his apartment, he can check the news vids for information about the _Soran_, can send notes to his contacts in the Beta Quadrant asking for real time updates on the search and rescue operations underway, can find a few moments to sit quietly in front of his _asenoi_ and plumb the unexpected sorrow he feels, the sense of loss, his deepening conviction that the ship won't be found—or if it is, survivors won't be.

If he stays here he can finish marking the entrance examinations, maybe even going over the Russian applicant's physics essay again. How frustrating not to be able to interview the young man personally. This written language barrier, Spock suspects, is hiding an intellect worth cultivating at the Academy.

He might be able to get permission from Dean Richardson to travel to London next week to the Federation Worlds' Chess Championship; the Russian applicant is scheduled to compete.

On the other hand, such a trip is contingent on the pre-trial hearings in Leiden where he and Captain Pike will testify in a few days. Working out a visit to London at the same time is problematic, impractical. The easiest course of action is to focus on the hearings and not concern himself further with a single struggling applicant.

Mr. Chekov can, after all, reapply at a later time if he is truly committed to Starfleet.

_That's decided, then._

_Except…_

"I want to," he says, answering Nyota's implied question and his own internal musings, his single phrase doing double duty.

The way a poem can speak of more than one thing at a time, Spock thinks.

It has taken him many years and much poetry to have learned this.

Clearly pleased, Nyota leans into him and gives him a kiss before they walk out into the dark, and that, too, is a poem.

**A/N: The bombing of the Feynman Conference is told in "The Interview" and "People Will Say." Spock's visit to London to offer Chekov another chance to apply to the Academy is in "Crossing the Equator."**

**This chapter deviates slightly in the center section—instead of Amanda telling her own story there, 8 year old Spock is our witness. **

**As always, thank you for reading, and when you leave a review, you keep me writing.**


	12. Leaving

**Chapter Twelve: Leaving  
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**Disclaimer: This is a labor of love, not profit.**

Sarek almost never answers the subspace console when Amanda is home. Most of the messages are for her anyway—either her sister Cecilia or Spock, who calls her every week.

Occasionally Amanda calls Spock before he can call her—to spare him the expense, she says, though Spock suspects that her real motive is impatience to talk to him, not that their phone calls are ever very long or fraught with serious matters.

"I just need to hear your voice," she sometimes says, and he allows himself to feel her affection and amusement when he lifts his eyebrow in silent response.

So when his parents' registry number flashes on the small subspace unit in his apartment in San Francisco, Spock is momentarily startled as he opens the connection and sees his father's face on the screen.

"Is Mother there?" Spock says at once, aware that this kind of greeting would have garnered criticism from his mother—or from Nyota, who teases him when he forgets to answer his comm with an established social nicety_._

"She has not returned from the university but should be home soon," Sarek says. "I wish to speak to you alone first."

At once Spock is wary. On her recent trip to Earth for radiation treatment to counteract the toxic wavelengths in Eridani's light spectrum, a hazard for humans living on Vulcan, his mother had taken longer to recover than normal. _A complication since then?_

Or his father's heart surgery several months ago—Sarek had assured Spock that the valve replacement had been successful. _Could that optimistic assessment have been in error?_

Sarek's expression is as impassive as always, his tone of voice even. Cautiously Spock reaches out for a sense of his parents through their family bond, something he usually keeps muted. His father's presence is there, like the steady thrum of an idling engine. His mother's brighter, lighter essence is there, too—like some grace note in the distance.

But underneath everything, he feels his parents' combined concern about him.

_They know. _

The upcoming disciplinary hearing.

Since the notice three weeks ago that the Judge Advocate General's office is investigating a report of fraternization, he's been anticipating this moment.

_He had hoped to spare his parents._

"Someone has contacted you."

Spock says it as a statement of fact rather than a question, and his father inclines his head a fraction.

"Two days ago," Sarek says. His gaze is impenetrable, even to Spock, who watches him closely. "An officer who said an inquest has been scheduled."

"A hearing," Spock says, correcting him. "To determine my guilt."

To Spock's relief and gratitude, Sarek does not ask him to explain. Nor does his father ask what will happen if he is found guilty. It would be like Sarek to have already looked up the regulations and assessed the consequences.

Just as Spock has, many times. Even before deciding to break them.

_Especially _before deciding to break them. He can hardly claim ignorance, even if that were some sort of defense.

"The officer mentioned your teaching assistant. He asked what I knew."

Now it is Spock's turn to resist asking for an explanation. As he expects, Sarek waits a moment and then continues.

"Your mother and I both said that we have met the cadet in question but know of nothing untoward in your behavior."

Another statement, but this time Spock recognizes the question behind it. He weighs how much to tell his father.

On one hand, confirming what both his mother and father surely suspect would be a relief. On the other hand, they will be disappointed—and worried.

Not that he isn't. Article 73 of the Starfleet code of conduct states that for a relationship to cross the line into fraternization, it must somehow advantage the junior party or show favoritism. Since his relationship with Nyota began after she was no longer his student, he could offer her no academic advantages.

At least technically. He still has a position of power over her as a professor supervising her assistantship. Article 74 deals with the power differential, forbidding coercion. As far as fraternization goes, this charge is the more damning, but how to convince Starfleet the relationship is mutual, consensual?

"I want this," Nyota had said, and he recalls the moment with perfect clarity—how a sudden rainstorm had sent them wet and shivering to the shelter of his apartment eight months ago; how her words were an answer to his unasked question, to his spoken warning.

"We could be censured."

At that moment she hadn't cared—nor had he, months of fretful longing overwhelming his ability to reason.

That confession is what stops him now as he talks to his father—not the sexual but the emotional nature of his relationship with Nyota—the very real need he has to see her, to touch her, to know her mind.

Saying nothing for a beat too long is an answer in itself. Something in Sarek's gaze flickers and he says, "You have counsel?"

Spock shakes his head.

"I have no need," he says, and again the odd flicker in Sarek's expression catches him by surprise.

"Spock," his father says, "if you are accused, you have need."

Again the struggle to know what to say. Spock looks down briefly to collect his thoughts. When he looks up again, his father's expression is cloudy, his brows knit in an unmistakable frown.

"I do not believe," Spock says slowly, "that I have violated the rules governing fraternization. At least as they are delineated in the code of conduct. However—"

He pauses, gauging his father's reaction. Sarek's frown remains.

"—the prosecution may interpret the prohibitions in such a way that I am…guilty."

There. It's as close to a confession as he can give his father, and he sees him take a breath as he sits back stiffly.

"I see," Sarek says. "Then you plan to admit your guilt? That is why you have no counsel?"

Spock blinks and moves one shoulder forward—his approximation of a shrug.

"I am uncertain what I will do."

His father's disapproval buzzes across their bond and Spock tamps the mental connection down.

"When you decide," Sarek says, "inform me."

Spock says nothing, but he knows his father doesn't expect him to respond, expects Spock to comply.

Which he may—or he may not. His father might try to communicate with his contacts in Starfleet on Spock's behalf. His mother might want to come to the hearing.

Either possibility is unwanted.

_Is the conversation over?_ Spock waits for his father to end the connection, but when Sarek leans forward again toward the viewscreen, instead of reaching out to hit the power button, he steeples his fingers under his chin, a signal that he isn't through speaking.

Silence for a few moments, and then Sarek says, "There is no need to face this alone."

Advice to take Starfleet's offer of counsel? Or a statement of support? Spock isn't sure, but he says, "I understand, Father."

"No," Sarek says, tilting his head slightly, looking even more intense than usual. "I do not think you do."

"Then what—"

"Your mother may want to tell you more when she gets home," Sarek interrupts, "but in the meantime, you may find my own experience instructive. If you have a few minutes?"

Because his father's words are so unexpected, Spock can only nod as his father settles back and begins to tell his tale.

X X X X X

"He's hot again," Amanda said, brushing Spock's feathery dark hair back from his forehead. It was a gesture so human, so unlike any he'd ever seen a Vulcan mother do, that Sarek almost missed the significance of her words.

Not that Vulcan mothers weren't attentive to their children—obsessively so, in fact, keeping detailed data of their growth and progress, painstaking spreadsheets of developmental mile markers anticipated and achieved.

Amanda's attention was just as obsessive but with a different purpose. Any Vulcan mother of a six-month old infant could reel off his physical benchmarks and give an accurate description of his behavior, measuring his progress against other children his age, all in the interest of truth—or competition, Sarek suspected. Amanda's goal in running her finger over Spock's swollen gums when he was teething, for instance, or noting the number of hours he slept—or more accurately, didn't sleep—was to make him more content.

"It tears my heart out to hear him cry," she explained once when Sarek suggested she was too quick to attend to his needs. "Don't worry. I'm not going to spoil him."

Although he wasn't sure what Amanda meant by _spoil_, he surmised it was an issue in rearing human children.

Indeed, watching Amanda interact with Spock was surprisingly pleasurable, if Sarek was honest with himself. Somber, warm-eyed, quiet, Spock was such a mixture of his parents' features that teasing them apart—his mother's eyes, his father's intensity—occupied Sarek's attention more often than he would have admitted to anyone.

"I'm sure it's a fever," Amanda said, cupping her hand under Spock's chin, laughing softly when he grimaced and turned away.

"Shall I call T'Para?" Sarek asked, naming the healer who had been following Spock's care since his birth. Amanda shook her head.

"Let's wait," she said. "It might be like the last time—nothing they can pin down. I hate to put him through more tests for nothing. We can call later if it gets worse."

What she didn't say was that this fever was just another in a series of alarms—a tendency to bruise, mild fevers that left Spock listless for a day or two—that individually seemed innocuous but added together frightened her. Most Vulcan babies—indeed, Vulcans of all ages—were notoriously hearty, their constitutions protecting them from the miseries of bacteria and viruses that plagued humans.

Could Spock's minor health issues be the result of his human heritage? The healers weren't sure.

Through his bond Sarek felt Amanda's anxiety about the fever, and something more—her reluctance to leave Vulcan while Spock was unwell.

With a flash of disappointment, Sarek realized that Amanda was going to cancel her plans to accompany him on his trip to Alcora.

"You'll only be gone a few days," she said, shifting Spock to her other hip as she made her way into the kitchen, Sarek parking himself in a chair at the table. Amanda opened the stasis unit and speared a piece of _fori_, a vegetable she likened to a stubby white carrot, and held it up to Spock. He gazed at it briefly before biting down.

It was true. The trip to Alcora should be short, an emergency meeting with the incoming ruling council about setting up negotiations with a dissident group that had become vocal since losing the recent elections. Two days, three; four if the dissidents were recalcitrant—but Sarek and the three junior ambassadors assigned to travel with him would be back home by the end of the week at the latest.

It was logical for Amanda and Spock to stay on Vulcan.

Logical, yet Sarek struggled to master his disappointment.

"I'll miss you, too," Amanda said, running her hand up his arm. Sarek blinked, mentally calculating when Spock's next sleep period would begin. He lifted his eyes to Amanda's and saw a smile flash across her face as she realized what he was thinking.

"Whoever said 'parting is such sweet sorrow' was wrong," Amanda said the next morning as Sarek put his travel bag in the flitter and turned to tell her goodbye.

"Shakespeare. _Romeo and Juliet_."

She laughed as she always did when he took her rhetorical questions literally, answering them, or explaining them, something he had done in all innocence when they first met but that he did intentionally now.

In her arms, Spock watched his father, and then, to Sarek's surprise, reached toward him, something he almost never did. Gingerly Sarek slid his hands around Spock's torso and lifted him out of Amanda's hold, marveling at the weight and heft of his son.

For a moment he recalled Sybok at the same age, though Sarek had seen him rarely then, and had held him like this only once.

Before he could stop himself, he gripped Spock tightly against his chest, causing him to fret and reach back to Amanda.

"Can't you make up your mind?" she cooed as Spock ducked his head under her chin.

Even in that short encounter, Sarek could tell that Spock was still running a mild fever.

_T'Para?_ he asked silently, and Amanda nodded.

"I'll call in a few minutes," she promised as he sat in the pilot's seat, shutting the door of the flitter. As he lifted off he saw Amanda waving and Spock, somber and flushed.

The ride to the embassy transport station was short and uneventful, and within an hour Sarek and the staff members traveling with him were headed to Alcora. Sarton and T'Ania were experienced staffers, both older than Sarek. T'Ania, in fact, had retired several years ago but had returned to diplomatic service at Sarek's request—a dearth of skilled negotiators putting a strain on the embassy.

The third junior ambassador, Stanar, was much younger. As the shuttle reached cruising speed, he unbuckled his seat restraints and made his way to where Sarek sat alone, PADDs stacked around him.

"May I?" Stanar said, and stifling his irritation, Sarek cleared a seat for him.

Since his assignment a week ago to this mission, Stanar's interactions with Sarek had increased 137.5% over his normal working correspondence. At first Sarek had assumed that Stanar was simply being thorough, particularly since this was his first off-world mission. Amanda, however, had another explanation.

"He's nervous," she told Sarek one evening when he mentioned—or as Amanda characterized it, _complained_—that Stanar was asking him to read all of the briefing documents for accuracy, to discuss the preliminary arrangements beforehand.

"He does not require the level of assistance he asks for," Sarek said, a touch too emphatically. Amanda smirked.

"This is the first time he's been off Vulcan," she said. "He wants to do everything right."

Sarek came as close to a harrumph as he could give.

"His work is exemplary. His concern is obsessive and illogical."

They were sitting at the kitchen table lingering over their meal, Spock sitting on Amanda's lap, a two-pronged fork in his chubby fist—a concession, Sarek knew, to his own squeamishness about watching someone touch food. When he wasn't here, he was certain Amanda let Spock pick up his food with his fingers.

"Then give him some reassurance," she said, circling Spock's fist with her own and pressing the fork into a slice of Terran mango.

Again Sarek felt a wave of exasperation.

"I have," he said, and Amanda looked up and said, "Maybe he needs to hear it from someone else."

"Explain."

"Ask him if he wants to bring T'Nia with him. And the baby. I'd like to have her company."

Six months ago after a difficult pregnancy, Stanar's wife T'Nia had delivered a premature girl shortly after Spock was born. Although she had been confined to a neonatal unit at first, the baby was doing well—or so Stanar had told Sarek the last time he remembered to ask.

"He would find such a suggestion…odd," Sarek said immediately. "No Vulcan would make such a request."

"You did," Amanda said, helping Spock spear another piece of mango.

Sarek said nothing—he knew when he was being teased. Long ago he had given up trying to convince Amanda that traveling with him on diplomatic missions served no practical purpose. He had lost that argument the first time he was assigned a lengthy posting off Vulcan after their marriage.

"Of course I'm coming with you," she had announced then, looking at him as if he were mentally deranged. "I didn't sign up for some weird long-distance relationship. There's no rule that says you can't have your family with you when are working—especially when you will be away from home for months at a time."

He had opened his mouth to retort but she had sat on his lap, thrown her arms around his neck, and whispered in his ear, "Besides, I can be useful. Just try me."

And that was that.

Stanar, however, wasn't married to a human. That changed the equation considerably—so Sarek had ignored Amanda's advice and said nothing.

"Ambassador," Stanar said, holding up a PADD to show Sarek. Unlike most Vulcans, Stanar was fair-haired and gray-eyed, often wearing light-weight cloaks and muted colors that set him apart. "You might want to read the historical research I compiled about Alcoran elections. This dissident group has accused the ruling coalition of voter fraud consistently in the past. I have juxtaposed that with a psychological assessment of them as a species. An excessively emotional people."

"Thank you," Sarek said, trying to keep the weariness from his voice, "but in my experience, most people are excessively emotional."

Stanar nodded, and when Sarek held out his hand, slipped him the PADD, unbuckled his restraint, and returned to the back of the shuttle.

Dutifully Sarek scanned the PADD but his attention wandered. He kept seeing Amanda, her hand raised in farewell, and Spock winking into the sun as the flitter flew away. If anything was seriously wrong, surely he would know by now—but all he felt from Amanda was a mild distracted worry, nothing more. He closed his eyes and tried to rest for the last fifteen minutes of the journey.

Three armed guards and the Alcoran council representative met the Vulcans when they landed at the capital city. The Alcorans were tall, willowy humanoids with a thatch of bright orange fernlike hair along the sides of their faces—which Amanda had called _mutton-chop whiskers, _an appellation Sarek found mystifying.

"You expect violence?" Sarek asked, motioning toward the armed guards, and the representative adjusted the universal translator pinned to his tunic and said, "Why are you wasting my time with useless commentary? You should already have been briefed on the situation."

Inwardly Sarek bristled—partly because the ambassador wasn't entirely wrong. His attention to the briefing papers had been less than optimal. If he was going to be effective here, he would have to remedy that.

"I apologize," he said with more equanimity than he felt. "I may have overlooked some details."

"We were told your party would be larger," the representative said, darting a glance over at the four Vulcans following him across the tarmac to a low-slung building ahead. "The council will see this as an insult."

Again Sarek bristled. _An overly emotional people_. Perhaps Stanar was not exaggerating after all.

"My wife and son were scheduled to accompany me," Sarek said, "but my son fell ill. They were forced to stay on Vulcan."

Stopping inside a large room just inside the building, the representative said, "Forgive my rudeness, Ambassador. We understand the importance of kinship here. Please, this station has a subspace console if you wish to contact your family. There may not be an opportunity to do so later. I will take the others on to the council chambers, and Armitre can bring you after your call."

At a signal, one of the armed guards stepped to Sarek's side and ushered him to a wall where a bank of subspace transceivers were mounted. Moving toward one that had familiar controls, Sarek tapped out his home registry number and activated the unit. Almost at once Amanda answered.

"He's the same," she said, and Sarek felt a paradoxical mix of relief and despair.

"But no worse," he said, and Amanda said, "No. T'Para says to let her know if the fever goes any higher. He's sleeping right now."

That was a surprise, since Spock almost never slept during the day.

"I may take a nap, too," Amanda said, yawning. "Since he'll probably keep me up most of the night."

When he hung up, Sarek felt more frustrated that he had before. And more torn. Hearing Amanda's voice had only strengthened his awareness of her worry. He should have given this assignment to someone else and stayed with her.

Tapping his pinned translator, the guard said, "Is something wrong?"

With a jerk, Sarek shook his head and mentally scolded himself for letting his mood show this way.

"Shall we go?" the guard said, and Sarek leaned over to grab the handle of his travel bag right as the ground shook under his feet.

"Down!" the guard said, shoving him hard. Immediately Alcorans were shouting and making a high-pitched keening noise painful to Sarek's ears.

"Go!" the guard said, pulling on Sarek's sleeve, and he stumbled to his feet and followed him out the door they had entered earlier. Twenty meters away was the shuttle from Vulcan, the flight crew still onboard.

The guard rushed Sarek across the tarmac and up the open shuttle hatch.

"Take off!" the guard yelled to the startled attendant in the narrow aisle of the shuttle. "We're under attack! The Ambassador could be in danger!"

Heading to the cockpit, the attendant paused when Sarek called out.

"No!" he said. "We have to wait for the others!"

Another explosion rocked the ground, shaking the shuttle with a sickening notion. A heavy cloud of smoke rose from the low building.

"Sir," the communications officer said, holding the shuttle comm in his hand, "the Alcorans are demanding that we move immediately. They believe we are a target."

"My staff—" Sarek began, but already he could hear the wail of ground-to-air missile alarms. If the shuttle didn't leave right away, it never would.

"Where's the nearest transport station?" Sarek asked the guard who brushed one hand through his whiskers before answering.

"There's one at the military base fifty kilometers due east," he said.

"Signal the authorities," Sarek said to the communications officer sitting behind the pilot, "and tell them we are heading to the next transport station. Find out what has happened to my staff members."

The officer's reply was lost in the whine of the engines starting. With a lurch that nearly toppled Sarek over, the shuttle lifted up and he moved to the window to survey the damage to the building below.

By now the air was so hazy with smoke that the building was difficult to see. Sarton and T'Ania both had years of experience in hostile situations. They were probably already negotiating a ceasefire with the dissidents, if that was who was behind the attack.

As the shuttle made its way to the next transport station, the communications officer relayed what ground control had pieced together. The dissident group was believed responsible, though their purpose was unclear. After all, the Vulcans were on Alcora at their invitation as a liaison to the ruling council. Why attack now as the delegation was arriving? It made no sense to Sarek. He let his frustration flood his bond with Amanda and wished he could communicate with her more directly.

"Where are my staff members?" Sarek said when he disembarked the shuttle a few minutes later. This station was much smaller than the one at the capital city, but he counted twenty guards carrying weapons and a dozen Alcorans dressed in council robes. One with especially bushy whiskers answered him.

"Ambassador Sarek? I'm Councilor Armitor. We weren't sure if you had been taken or not. The dissidents told us they have three Vulcans and our council representative."

Sarek's heart sank. Suddenly what had started out as a relatively simple investigation into voter fraud had escalated into a dangerous hostage situation.

"Where are they?" he asked again, and Councilor Armitor bobbed his head.

"Unknown. They were abducted from their ground transport as they were leaving the station. Security is tracing the communication signals, but so far all we know is that they are still in the capital."

"You say they have been in communication," Sarek said, following the councilor down a shadowy corridor. Behind him he heard the heavy footfalls of the armed guards.

"One call," Armitor said, motioning to Sarek to enter a large room ahead of him. "They said they would contact us again soon."

"Did they make any demands?"

"Not anything new," the councilor said. "They want the sitting government dismissed and elections held immediately."

Entering the room, Sarek noticed more Alcorans crouched on large round cushions on the floor or standing in groups of two or three talking. All were wearing the same asymmetrical robes woven from dark nubby material. All had bushy whiskers, most in various shades of orange or red. _A genderless species?_ Another detail Stanar had probably included in the briefing that Sarek had missed.

Such inattention was uncharacteristic and troubling.

_Noted, and set aside for now. _

Armitor led him to a very tall Alcoran standing at the far end of the room. From the way the other Alcorans deferred to him, Sarek assumed he was the council leader.

"_Mak-ab_ Armalon," Armitor said with a sweeping gesture. "This is the Vulcan ambassador, Sarek."

The _mak-ab_ inclined his head slightly.

"We have brought trouble to your people," he said, the universal translator giving his voice an eerie inflectionless tone that was a jarring contrast to the obvious distress in his expression.

"The delegation must be released at once," Sarek said, and the _mak-ab_ held out his hands in what Sarek surmised was the Alcoran equivalent of agreement.

"We have told them so," the _mak-ab_ said. "The dissidents do not listen, not to anything."

"You have dealt with this group before?"

"Always the same," the _mak-ab_ said. "Each election cycle they contest the results."

Sarek remembered Stanar telling him the same thing on the shuttle. It didn't excuse the violence, of course, but it helped explain their desperation if they habitually lost the elections.

"I will need to contact the Vulcan High Council," Sarek said, "but until the hostages are released, I cannot negotiate with the dissidents. In the meantime, however, if your election overseers can arrange to meet with me—"

"I do not take your meaning," the _mak-ab_ interrupted, and Sarek said, "The officials in charge of your elections. Once the hostages are released, I hope to resume our investigation. Such chronic dissatisfaction among the electorate must be addressed."

"The dissidents are violent radicals," the _mak-ab_ said. "Alcorans with a history of violence are barred from the elections. We need no election overseers. The dissidents are well-known."

Now it was Sarek's turn be confused.

"Are you saying, " he began slowly, "that the dissidents are not allowed to run for office?"

"We do not condone violence," the _mak-ab_ said.

For a heartbeat Sarek felt a stab of irritation. Was the _mak-ab_ being deliberately vague? This was the sort of misdirection that was especially baffling to Vulcans. If Amanda were here, she would have an easier time getting what she called a _read_ on the Alcorans.

"Excuse me, _Mak-ab_ Armalon," Sarek said, waiting for the universal translator to catch up with him, "but my question is a simple one. Are the dissidents part of the election process? Can they run for office?"

"Violent people are not allowed to participate," the _mak-ab_ said.

"Then they do not run for office?"

"They are violent. They are not allowed."

"Do they vote?"

"They would not vote for those who are not like them," the _mak-ab_ said, shifting from side to side.

"But it is allowed?"

"It is not necessary," the _mak-ab_ said, making the same shifting motion. _Irritation? Uneasiness?_ Again Sarek wished Amanda were here. She would know.

For a moment he and the _mak-ab_ stood eyeing each other and finally Sarek said, "Our discussion about your election practices will have to wait. When the dissidents contact you, you must make it clear to them that until the hostages are released unharmed, we will not proceed."

Suddenly the representative who had introduced him to the _mak-ab_ was at his shoulder.

"Ambassador," Armitor said, "we have quarters arranged for you. If you will follow me?"

Shaking his head, Sarek said, "I need to contact the Vulcan High Command. If you have a subspace console nearby, take me to it."

From the corner of his eye, Sarek saw Armitor dart a glance at the _mak-ab_, some nonverbal communication that seemed pregnant with meaning.

"Our off-world communications are inoperative at the moment," Armitor said. "A result of the attack, no doubt."

"Indeed," Sarek said dryly.

"As soon as communications are working, I will alert you," Armitor said, holding out his arm toward the door and taking a step forward. Repressing a sigh, Sarek followed him.

They didn't go far. At the end of the corridor Armitor palmed open a door to a small room furnished with a narrow cot and a metal basin on a corner table, looking like something from a Terran prison movie. Sarek raised an eyebrow in undisguised skepticism.

"How long am I to remain here?"

"I will return soon," Armitor said with an awkward bow. Sarek stepped into the room and the door slid shut immediately. Pressing his fingers onto the release button, Sarek wasn't surprised when the door didn't open.

Settling on the cot, he closed his eyes and searched for Amanda. She had once described how it felt when he called her this way, like standing waist deep in the ocean as the tide began to turn—a gradual but persistent—even insistent—pressure to be swept out to sea. Thrilling and scary—and irresistible, she had told him, running her fingers up the line of his jaw until his eyes closed of their own accord, a shameful lack of control on his part—except that he wasn't the least bit shamed by it.

She mentally joined him at once, her alarm about the hostages like bright pieces of glass in a whirling kaleidoscope. Her worry for him was even brighter, hotter, at the front of her consciousness.

_Spock?_ he thought, and she reassured him that he was more comfortable, the fever not gone but subsiding.

Soon he felt her becoming weary and reluctantly he dampened their connection and lay back on the cot to meditate.

He had just slipped into the second level of consciousness when he heard the door slide open and saw Armitor motioning for him to leave.

"The dissidents have contacted you?" Sarek asked, exiting the small room in two strides.

"The situation is resolved," Armitor said.

"The hostages? Where are they?"

Instead of answering, Armitor walked briskly ahead of Sarek down the corridor to the large meeting room where the same Alcorans milled around. In the center of the room stood the _mak-ab_. When Sarek entered the room, he waved him over.

"Ambassador," he said, "you are free to go. The dissidents have been neutralized."

"Explain," Sarek said, squaring his shoulders. "Where are my staff members?"

The _mak-ab's_ hand drifted to his universal translator on his cloak. _A nervous habit?_

"We regret to inform you," the _mak-ab_ said, "that our security forces were unable to rescue your people. We also lost three guards and a council representative."

With a jolt, Sarek realized what the _mak-ab_ was saying, that the Alcorans had sent in a military strike against the dissidents, that the Vulcan and Alcoran hostages had been killed. For a moment he couldn't move.

"Your services as mediator are no longer required," the _mak-ab_ said, and with a flutter of his hand, he turned and walked away, dismissing Sarek.

Sarek dutifully noted and filed with his superiors the rest of his time on Alcora—his insistence that he be taken to the site of the attack, his directions about recovering the bodies of Sarton, T'Ania, and Stanar, his attempts to interview members of the ruling council. By the time his shuttle left 27 hours later, Sarek had written a preliminary draft of his report to the Vulcan High Council, complete with his resignation.

X X X X X

Sarek sits back from the viewscreen. His normally placid face is slightly pinched, his breathing more rapid than usual. Obviously even after all this time, retelling the story evokes strong emotions.

_Understandable_. Without wanting to, Spock has a mental image of his former aide, J.C. Ellison, dead because Spock finagled an assignment for him on a deep space research vessel.

_Not because of you_, Nyota has said more than once_. Because of the ion storm. Stop blaming yourself._

Impossible. Humans with their faulty memories might be able to set aside such ruminations, might be able to achieve what they called _closure_.

Not him. And now he knows, not his father.

"Your mother is home," Sarek says without looking back. In the shadows behind his father, Spock sees Amanda emerge, one hand tugging off her overcloak and draping it over her arm as she comes forward.

"You've told him," she says, and at first Spock thinks she means the JAG interview. But Sarek nods and says, "About the resignation only. Not what happened later."

Some unspoken conversation flickers between his parents as he watches, and suddenly Spock realizes that they had planned this, that the story of his father's resignation is one they want him to hear for some reason.

Because his own resignation is a very real possibility? The only person he's suggested that to is Nyota, shortly after he received notice about the fraternization charges. Her response had been instantaneous and furious, catching him completely off guard.

They've hardly spoken since then, not just out of caution—he's sure his communications are being monitored now, if they weren't before—but also because he doesn't know what else to say to her. If he resigns it will be to forestall an actual guilty plea—and will, he hopes, preserve her career.

On the screen, his father stands up and Spock assumes the conversation is over. As he reaches forward to click the connection closed, his mother slides into the chair Sarek vacated and holds up one finger, the symbol of human mothers everywhere about to deliver a lecture. He drops his hand and waits.

"You've only heard part of the story," she says, adjusting her robe. "Don't make any decisions until you've heard the rest."

**A/N: This chapter is divided into two parts because…well, Sarek and Amanda each wanted to have their say! When a chapter gets too long, I know readers won't stick with it to the end…but don't worry. The second half is written and will be ready to post in a couple a days—a quick turnaround, I promise!**

**Thanks for reading—and a special thanks for letting me know you are reading!**


	13. Thankfulness

**Chapter 13: Thankfulness**

**Disclaimer: I'm just visiting and recording for free what I observe.  
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"Do you need to answer that?" Amanda asks. She is poised to begin telling what she calls _the end of the story_ when Spock's comm chimes. _Nyota, assuredly_. No one else calls him. He shakes his head, letting the call go to his voice queue.

For a moment his mother looks at him closely, the way she used to when he was young and she suspected him of hiding something from her—which was often the case.

_A jar of poisonous insects under his bed, for instance, kept there to observe their dormant cycle—his mother's surprising disapproval when she discovered them one day during routine cleaning. _

_The persistent bullying at school he never mentioned—his conviction that her interference would only ratchet up the violence. _

Too often, however, a look like the one she is giving him now foreshadowed her eventually finding out the truth.

"Your father and I aren't trying to tell you what to do," she says, such a patently false statement that Spock merely tilts his head and gives his mother a wry look in turn. "I don't mind giving advice," she goes on, "but I know full well that you are going to make your own decisions. You always have."

The frown on her face is at odds with the exasperated pride in her voice. Part of her has always secretly applauded Spock's self-determination, even when he alarmed her by it: leaving early for his _kahs-wan_, for instance. Turning down the VSA. If his father found his unpredictable choices baffling, his mother was more accepting.

"It's just that sometimes," she says, and instantly Spock is on guard, "you need someone to offer an alternate point of view. Someone you trust to show you another perspective, even when you are about to make an error. _Especially_ when you are about to make an error."

He's not fooled. Her oblique references to _someone you trust_ are about Nyota.

Spock thinks of the last time he and Nyota spoke, a rendezvous arranged through a cryptic email. _The lab hours are from 0900 until 1530 on Wednesday_, she wrote, and he had been waiting at the bottom of the stairwell at 1531 when she exited the language building.

What followed was a short walk together across the commons in the direction of the student cafeteria, side-by-side yet so far apart that he had to strain to hear her when they spoke, their words short and clipped, and angry too—not just hers, which didn't surprise him, but his as well, which did. His anger at their inability to share a private moment—the desolation he felt as the deadline for the disciplinary hearing moved inexorably forward—made him regret trying to see her at all.

"Have you talked to the lawyers?" Nyota had asked, eyes forward, narrowed, as he said, "There is no need."

"You've made up your mind?"

"I may hear the evidence first," he said uneasily as a small group of students overtook them and passed them. "But resignation seems the most logical option."

She sped up a beat then, and he had to lengthen his stride to stay abreast.

"You know I think that's a bad idea," she said, darting a glance at him. "You ought to at least enter a plea."

They've been through this already. If he pleads not guilty, she will be called to testify, and while he knows she wouldn't perjure herself, her testimony might have unforeseen negative consequences for her later.

Pleading guilty, of course, is out of the question. Then he would ruin not only his career but hers as well.

As he said, resignation is the logical option.

The afternoon sky was cloudless, the temperature uncharacteristically balmy for this time of year, but Spock was chilled as they walked like strangers down the paved walkway. From the corner of his eye he saw her clutching her PADD and several old-fashioned bound notebooks to her chest like someone wearing armor into battle.

That simile came to him easily—a result, no doubt, of the time he and Nyota dwell in each other's minds—intimate moments when her more lyrical way of seeing the world both delights him and reorients him in a new direction, the way a compass sways to the electromagnetic forces on Earth.

Ahead of them the pathway split, one part going forward to the cafeteria, one branch heading toward the part of the campus that includes the computer science classrooms. Nyota was walking less than three feet away but it might as well have been kilometers, so distant did he feel.

"I'm going to Riverside tomorrow," he said quietly as they reached the diverging paths. "I will call when I return. Perhaps we can—"

No one was around to overhear them, but he let his words drift off in an open-ended speculation—something so unlike him that he almost sighed.

She had started on toward the cafeteria without a word, and for a heartbeat he stood and watched her. At the last minute before he headed in the other direction, he heard her say, "Okay," with such resignation that the image has haunted him ever since.

Haunts him now, as his mother peers at him across the distance of space.

"Will you do something for me?" she says, and he blinks but doesn't answer. She adds, "At least talk out your options before the hearing," she says. "With a lawyer, with—"

She doesn't say _your assistant,_ but he hears the words in her silence. "After all," Amanda says, "your decision affects _other people_, too."

Before he can protest, his mother says, "That's what your father did. And it worked for him."

X X X X X X

She knew about the resignation before he told her.

"You can't," Amanda said when Sarek was finally home, his travel bag unpacked, the cup of tea she brought to his study cooling, untouched, on his desk.

"I already have," he said, not meeting her gaze.

She stood in front of his desk rubbing one wrist with her other hand, something she did when she was anxious. On the floor nearby, Spock sat fingering a small building block, part of a set Amanda's sister Cecilia had sent from Earth.

"I understand that you are upset," Amanda said, feeling Sarek bite back the impulse to correct her. He _was_ upset—but that wasn't the reason he had resigned. He told her so.

"I don't believe you," she said, crossing her arms. "You can't argue that resigning is the logical thing to do."

"Amanda," he said, meeting her eyes, "I failed in my duty. I am not competent to remain in my post at the embassy."

With a sigh, Amanda uncrossed her arms and sat down in a chair at the side of Sarek's desk.

"You did not fail—" she began, but Sarek interrupted her brusquely.

"Three Vulcans died. So did seventeen Alcorans, including the people who asked us to come there."

"You were asked to come there by people who claimed they had been disenfranchised," Amanda said, "and you found evidence that corroborated what they said. You didn't fail."

"At what cost? How can that information help them now?"

"The quadrant trade consortium will place sanctions against the Alcorans. Their charter requires free and equal elections among members—"

"Sanctions will seem a small price to pay for ridding themselves of a troublesome dissident group, Amanda. And my participation is the reason they were able to do so."

"You couldn't have known that the dissidents would take hostages. Or that the military would be sent in. You're blaming yourself, punishing yourself. I understand that you feel guilty—"

"It is not that simple," Sarek said, running his fingers across his brow. The unexpected motion caught the attention of Spock, who paused in his examination of the block pincered between his thumb and forefinger and looked up at his father.

"Then explain it to me," Amanda said, reaching across the desk and resting her fingers on Sarek's arm. "Help me understand how what you are doing is logical."

She slid the fingers of her right hand to his palm.

"Tell me."

Suddenly she was in his mind, his anger alarming her, the darkness of his thoughts causing her to pull back briefly before pressing onward.

And then she arrived at last to what he had not yet articulated to himself, not in his quietest moments or in his deepest thoughts, but only in the barest, most honest interludes between one heartbeat and another, when his clarity of purpose and vision of himself were at their best and truest.

A place he had never shown to any one—not even to her, not even as intimate, as unguarded, as they were with each other.

He took a breath and she knew he was considering how to begin.

"I have to resign," he said slowly, "not because of what I did, and not because of what I did not do, but because of what I would have done."

For a second she wasn't sure she had heard him right.

"I'm not following you."

He sat up and closed his eyes for a moment.

"When we arrived at Alcora," he said, opening his eyes and looking at Amanda carefully, "I stayed behind to call you."

Amanda nodded and knit her brows.

"Go on," she said, and he said, "The…others…went on ahead without me."

"And you feel guilty that you weren't with them," Amanda finished for him.

"No," he said, shaking his head. "There was no way I could have known what the dissidents were planning to do."

"Then what—"

"As soon as I knew that the hostages had been taken," he said, "my first thoughts were not about them, not about their safety. Instead, I felt a…_relief_…that you and Spock were not with them. If you had been on Alcora—"

"You would have been taken hostage, too."

"And you. And Spock."

He glanced down at his hands, the only sounds in the room Amanda's thready breathing, the click of the little block as Spock tapped it on the floor.

"But," Amanda said with a sudden breath, "it didn't happen that way. You're beating yourself up over what _might_ have happened."

"No," Sarek said, and Amanda tilted her head and gave him a quizzical look. "That is not what concerns me. What I came to realize on the way back from Alcora is what I would have done if you _had_ been taken hostage with the others, if Spock were there with you. I made it clear to the Alcorans that we would not negotiate with hostage takers..."

The source of Sarek's guilt jumped into relief. If she had been there—if she had been one of the hostages—he would have been helpless to protect her—would have had his hands tied against his will by the strict Vulcan protocols. She slipped her other hand across the desk.

"Sarek," she said, "You must never feel guilty for doing your duty. I wouldn't want you to do anything else. If that's why you think you have to resign—"

"No, Amanda," Sarek said, "you misunderstand me."

"Then what—" she began, but she faltered as his words tumbled simultaneously into her mind and through the air.

"I resigned because I would _not_ have done my duty."

She blinked hard and looked away for a moment, unsure what to say.

"If you had been there, I would have negotiated for your release. I would have gone to the dissidents personally, violated every protocol if I thought it would have kept you and Spock from harm."

The confession was large and terrible, like some unwanted intruder in his life. His guilt—his shameful admission to loving her and Spock so fiercely that he would have dropped everything to protect them—made her heart ache.

Her upwelling gratitude confused him.

_What is there to be grateful for?_ he asked, and she showed him an image of himself as he had been yesterday morning when he left for Alcora, lifting Spock from her arms before saying goodbye, his own contentment and possessiveness connecting them like an electric current—

"That's why you are resigning, because you would put your family before your duty?" she asked, and Sarek inclined his head. Her words, she could tell, sounded to him like something brittle, accusatory. She hurried on. "No one would expect you to do otherwise. It's a natural reaction to protect your family."

"A natural _tendency_," Sarek corrected her, "but a Vulcan would not give in to it."

"You don't know that," she said. This time the look he gave her was jaundiced. "Well, you don't! You're holding yourself to a standard that might be impossible."

"Nevertheless," he said, beginning to tire of the argument, "it is my decision."

Amanda pulled her hands back across the desk and said, "So that's it. You're just going to abandon your colleagues."

The staccato of her voice was surprising, even to her. She saw a flicker of anger in Sarek's expression.

"Don't look at me like that," she went on. "You know what I mean. Who else at the embassy has your experience and expertise? No one. When T'Ania retired you were shorthanded until she agreed to come back. She knew how important her service was, how necessary. And now? You've lost three valuable members of your staff. What's going to happen to all the work that needs to get done?"

At that he started. She saw him react and she went on.

"And Stanar? Are you going to tell T'Nia that he was wrong to believe that what the embassy does is worth the risk he took? The sacrifice he made? As his daughter grows up, you want her to hear that her father's last efforts came to nothing?"

"Amanda," Sarek said, the anger draining away. In its place was a weariness that weighed her down, too, and blackened the edges of her consciousness like a heavy blanket.

He was asking her to stop, but she shook her head and leaned back.

"No," she said, "you need to listen. If you resign, who will pick up where you left off on Alcora? Do you even know for certain that the dissidents were responsible for the attack? From what you told me, the government had a lot to lose when you started poking around their election practices. They could have staged the attack themselves as a way to get rid of the dissidents. Have you thought of that?"

She could see by the look on his face that he had not—and through their bond she felt his disgust at the idea of such duplicity.

"Oh, yes," she said in response. "A Vulcan wouldn't be suspicious, but a human would. Who else besides you will have access to that kind of insight if you resign? None."

He looked away then, and Amanda paused to take a breath.

"And what about the other people on Alcora who disagree with the government? What about other dissident groups? What will happen to them? If the government officials _are_ guilty of the attack, you are letting them get away with murder. Won't they feel emboldened to do it again?

"It seems to me," she said, standing up and leaning over to pick up Spock, "that no one ever really knows what they will do in a crisis until they face it. Not even you. Maybe you would have bargained for my life and maybe you wouldn't. You didn't have to. You might not ever have to. But in the meantime there's a lot of good you could be doing as the ambassador from Vulcan. And moping about what you might have done is keeping you from it."

At that she scooped Spock from the floor and left the study, pulling the door to behind her.

She carried Spock into his room, intending to set him into his crib, but she didn't want to lose contact with him yet—not just the physical touch of his soft cheek against her own but the light prickle of their bond, flowing back and forth when he grabbed her fingers or she stroked his hair.

She took him with her into her own bedroom instead, lying down on her bed and curling around him like a comma while he lay quietly in the half-light, taking in the details of the room with his wide-open gaze.

By the time she heard Sarek entering the room, she was starting to doze. Without opening her eyes, she felt the mattress shift as Sarek picked up his son.

Carefully, she peeked and saw Spock perched in the crook of his arm, knew that Sarek was noting, as he often did, how similar Spock's eyes were to hers.

That same deluge of possessiveness washed over him again—and spilled over to her.

_No one ever really knows what they will do in a crisis until they face it,_ she had said, and it was true. No matter how much he might plan or anticipate or rationalize what he should do, he could not say with certainty what he might do at any given moment. No one could. No one with free will. It was foolish to pretend otherwise.

Would he agree? She hoped so.

But she wasn't sure.

Still holding Spock, he headed down the hallway to his study and she heard him pulling out the chair behind his desk, heard the squeak as he sat down.

And then she knew that he had heeded her—had _needed_ her, she amended—and she fell asleep knowing that he was contacting the High Council again, this time to rescind his resignation.

X X X X X X

Samuel T. Cogley paces the length of the small room as if he is measuring it for new carpet—the heel of one shoe almost touching the toe of the other as he makes his way slowly past the chair where Spock tries to sit motionless. An observer would be struck at what a contrast they are—Cogley not bothering to hide his nervousness, Spock apparently completely at ease.

An irony, Spock knows, considering what is at stake. An hour from now Cogley might be on a shuttle to his law practice on Starbase Eleven, hardly inconvenienced by spending several days on Earth. Spock has more to lose. His good name. His teaching career. His future in Starfleet.

Maybe even his relationship with Nyota.

He approaches that idea like someone at the scene of a horrific traffic accident—both repelled by the violence and compelled to look.

At the end of the room, Cogley swivels around and begins pacing back in the other direction. Short and balding, he walks with his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes cast down, like someone about to be chastised.

From his chair in the corner, Spock watches him, remembering how unprepossessing the lawyer had appeared when he met him, Cogley arriving unannounced at Riverside Shipyard, telling Spock that Christopher Pike would have both their heads if this hearing went badly.

The evidence, Cogley argued then, might be so insubstantial it would be dismissed. After all, Spock didn't know who had accused him. A student disgruntled by a bad grade? The board would be skeptical of testimony from someone who had what Cogley called _an axe to grind_.

And if the evidence was substantial? Spock told Cogley he would resign. Indeed, until Cogley pressed him for an answer about his plans, he wasn't certain what he would do.

The board would interpret a resignation as an admission of guilt, Cogley said. Of fraternization—showing either favoritism or coercion in his relationship with Cadet Uhura. Either way, her reputation would suffer.

That idea had almost driven Spock to lose control. He had entertained himself briefly with a fantasy of throttling the lawyer into silence.

He could plead his innocence—after all, he had shown neither favoritism nor coerced Nyota, though he knows that in the broader view, he is certainly guilty of violating the spirit of the regulations.

In the end, Spock agreed to let Cogley represent him—something he almost regrets as he watches him pace the room where they wait to be called to the hearing.

Tentatively he searches for his parents' presence and feels an undercurrent of their concern.

"Are you sure you don't want us there?" his mother had asked at the end of their conversation the other day, and he had felt such a flush of panic that she frowned into the console screen and said, "If you change your mind—"

"If I do," Spock said, "I will let you know."

He had reached forward to cut the transmission but his mother had stopped him.

"Spock," she said, one hand upraised as if she could reach across the distance to him, "whatever you decide to do—whatever happens—you know that your father and I support you."

Of course he did. Sarek's initial disappointment when Spock chose Starfleet over the Vulcan Science Academy was short-lived. Indeed, when Spock won the Brodhead teaching award recently, his father sent him a congratulatory note that startled him with its intensity.

"Don't try to decide right now what you should do," his mother said, her expression serious. "Oh, I know how much you and your father love to plan ahead. It's not in your nature to play anything by ear—"

She laughed softly then, the tiny lines around her eyes crinkling.

"There's still so much good you can do where you are. Make sure you get some help. Don't face this alone," she said right before telling him goodbye, her comment an enigma he's puzzled over since.

"Commander?"

A rustle at the door—a lieutenant with a PADD in her arms.

Spock looks up as Cogley stops pacing.

"It's time," she says, and from the end of the corridor, Spock hears footfalls growing louder, the nine board members heading past to the hearing room. With a wave of her arm, the lieutenant motions for him to fall in step behind the admirals in dress uniforms, the lone civilian member in a dark suit, like people going to a funeral.

This simile, too, comes easily to him—and falling into step behind them, Spock has a thoroughly irrational moment when he worries that it might prove true.

At the end of the corridor is a double door leading into the room where the hearing will be. Taller than most of the board members, Spock watches as they disappear, one by one, ahead of him into the room.

When his turn comes, he narrows his gaze, avoiding the front of the room where the board members are settling into their chairs on one side of a long table.

He lowers his eyes and limits his field of vision to the strip of floor leading to the seats waiting for him and Samuel Cogley.

As visually blinkered as he is, he still can't block the noises in the room—an intake of breath from one of the admirals as she accidentally brushes too close to the microphone at her seat and sends a feedback squeal through the sound system; an overhead air exchanger switching off; someone in the audience trying to muffle a cough.

And Nyota among the observers, the creak of her chair as she shifts her posture familiar to him from months of working in the same room, parsing the meaning of every sound she makes until he can distinguish which rustles, which breaths, are hers. He looks up and meets her eyes.

_Gratitude_—that she is here, that he is not alone.

And suddenly he understands that part of his mother's story—the upwelling of gratitude she felt at Sarek's unspoken confession of love.

_Don't face this by yourself_, his mother had told him, and not for the first time in his life—nor, he is certain, for the last—he feels _gratitude_ for her words.

**A/N: This chapter ends right at the point where Chapter 13 of "People Will Say" picks up. Chapters 13 and 14 of "People Will Say" tell the story of the disciplinary hearing in detail, so I won't retell it here. **

**Instead, this story will jump a few months into the future of the little timeline where I eavesdrop on these characters. After "People Will Say," the story of Spock and Nyota in the aftermath of the disciplinary hearing is told in "Crossing the Equator," and "My Mother, the Ambassador" will fill in a few gaps there.**

**I hope that's not too confusing! Let me know if you are still onboard! Your words keep me going!**


	14. Where the Heart Is

**Chapter 14: Where the Heart Is**

**Disclaimer: These characters are like coloring book pages. Someone else drew the outlines, but I have the crayons now.**

"May I have a word?" Spock asks the young cadet hunkered over the computer keyboard in the language lab, his voice pitched soft and low the way Nyota had warned him against.

"It makes you sound _ominous_," she had cautioned him when she called him earlier. "Chekov's scared enough already. He doesn't need another fright."

"I never intentionally frighten anyone," Spock said, and on the other end of the comm line, Nyota had stifled what sounded suspiciously like a snort.

Cadet Chekov looks up, casts a glance over his shoulder, and visibly jumps.

"Commander Spock!" he says, flushing. "I didn't hear you come in!"

"Indeed," Spock says, careful to keep his expression neutral. "Cadet Uhura has asked me to speak to you."

Chekov's face falls at once.

"She did?" he asks, and Spock says, "She says your performance on the tutorials she designed for you is unacceptable."

Pushing back his chair and standing up, Chekov nods once, twice, his eyes darting to Spock's face and down to the floor.

"You have missed four of the past twelve scheduled sessions," Spock says, and again Chekov nods and looks up and then down quickly.

Perhaps his tone of voice is too imperious after all. Chekov's manner is so abashed that Spock feels a wave of annoyance.

"She also tells me," he says, consciously softening his tone, "that you are considering leaving the Academy. Please explain."

He motions to the chair and Chekov sits back down, this time stiffly upright, like someone waiting to be called to his execution. Spock pulls out the chair beside him, turns it, and sits.

For a moment no one says anything. Then Spock prompts, "Cadet?"

With a sigh, Chekov says, "Commander, is too hard to say _everyzing_."

Again Spock deliberately sets aside a wave of irritation with the young man. And annoyance, too, that he has to have this conversation alone, without Nyota's guidance or insight. Even here in a place as public as the language lab, they are careful not to be seen together too often.

"Your discomfort is irrelevant," Spock says. "I require an explanation."

He watches as Chekov's face contorts, the young man clearly struggling to summon his words.

"Commander," Chekov says, "_ze_ lab is waste of time. My Standard still not good."

"You admit to missing a third of the scheduled sessions," Spock says, and when Chekov shrugs and nods, he adds, "Your judgment of the tutorial's effectiveness is, therefore, based on incomplete data. Had you gone to all the sessions—"

"Still no good!"

Spock is so rarely interrupted by anyone that Chekov's outburst catches him off guard. Tilting his head slightly, he examines the young cadet sitting before him.

Sweaty, his hair a tousled mop, dark smudges under his eyes—_is he ill?_ Certainly he is distressed. Spock asks him.

"Not ill," Chekov says miserably. "Just…hard work."

Something about Chekov's confession doesn't ring true. When Spock met him in London at the Federation Worlds Chess Tournament, Chekov had been so exuberant that the judge had to wave him down several times during the first match. When he walked off the stage, he bounced on the balls of his feet like an acrobat. Only when Spock told him that he had been denied admission to the Academy because of his poor language scores had Chekov's mood darkened.

"_I speak four languages_," Chekov said in flawless Russian later when Spock and Nyota took him for lunch at a local pub, "_but Standard is making me crazy. The sounds are all alike!_"

"I know what you mean," Nyota had reassured him. "It's not my first language either—or the Commander's—but we learned it. You can, too."

"Not okay," he said so sadly that Nyota commented on it that night after she and Spock retired to the boutique hotel in Chelsea where they had a room.

"He might be a math genius and a chess grandmaster," she told Spock, "but if he's not willing to learn the language, he's wasting his time reapplying for admission."

Privately Spock had shared her reservations, though he hadn't voiced them at the time. Instead, he had offered Chekov the chance to sit the exams again and take accelerated coursework in the summer to help him catch up with his class.

The language tutorials with Nyota were also part of the agreement—an unfair burden on her, of course, though she had insisted that she didn't mind—and Spock was hopeful that Chekov's ambition to get into space would be sufficient motivation to invest in the extra work.

Apparently not.

"If the work is too difficult," Spock says, leaning forward, "then withdrawing before the end of the term is the logical option."

Already pale, Chekov blanches and blinks rapidly.

"I know."

As one of the initial graders of Chekov's entrance exams, Spock had seen something in the unusual, almost whimsical, answers that had spurred him to ask the dean to give the young man another chance. The cadet's inability to rise to the linguistic demands is as much a surprise as a disappointment.

Spock looks closely at him and considers what to say next.

"Very well," he says, placing his palms on his knees as if he is about to rise, "the Academy has a waiting list of potential candidates who are willing to meet the expected performance measures. Since you are not—"

For the second time, Chekov interrupts him with an outburst.

"Not finish? Go home?"

"That is what you are proposing. Or did I misunderstand you?"

To Spock's horror, Chekov puts his hands to his face and groans.

"No, Commander!" Chekov says, lowering his hands and looking squarely at Spock. "I mean, yes, I tell Cadet Uhura that I leave, but now I think on it I don't know. What if I try more harder? Go to lab more…all _ze_ time. I just…I be…been—"

And then his fractured Standard dissolves into Russian epithets. From his chair, Spock raises an eyebrow.

"_I'm sorry, sir_," Chekov says, not bothering to try to speak anything other than his native tongue, "_but I've been under so much pressure. I thought I would be doing better by now, would have more control by now, but I feel like I'm not smart enough to learn this!_"

"That seems unlikely," Spock says slowly. "In every other academic measure, you have excelled, at least in the past."

"_But if I can't become fluent in this stupid language, it won't matter_!" Chekov exclaims, his hands punctuating his words. "_I have top marks in stellar cartography, but Professor Thompson won't let me present my paper on singularities to the symposium because no one would understand me! It's hopeless._"

"You exaggerate," Spock says evenly. "Your language skills may be less than optimal, but with sufficient practice you could improve."

"Not just speaking," Chekov says, returning to his juddery Standard, "but other…things…has…have slowed my studies this term."

"Adjusting to life at the Academy is a challenge for many people," Spock says quietly. He looks up briefly as two cadets walk in, their undisguised curiosity making them dawdle a beat until Spock catches their eye.

Chekov shakes his head.

"Is just," he says, lowering his voice, "Academy is where I want to be. Where I always want to be. But, is not—"

He falls silent, obviously casting about for a word. When one doesn't seem forthcoming, Spock supplies one.

"Manageable."

"No, to manage is not _ze_ problem," Chekov says, blinking rapidly. "Academy is _lonely_. Is not _fun_."

This is such an unexpected assessment that at first Spock is sure the cadet has misspoken.

"Fun? As in amusing? Enjoyable?"

"Yes!" Chekov says, nodding vigorously. "Only thing fun is nothing."

"You mean that you find nothing enjoyable at the Academy."

Chekov's face scrunches up and he waves one hand in the air.

"Yes," he says. "I mean, _no_, I like classes. Stellar cartography is…fun. Transporter theory is fun. But is lonely here."

At that Spock sits back and crosses his arms and thinks back to his earlier conversation with Nyota.

"You need to talk to him," she had said when she called. "He's pretty miserable. He's homesick, and I think his girlfriend just dumped him."

"As I recall," Spock said, "Chekov turned 17 two months ago. Homesickness is not unexpected in someone his age. And a romantic liaison is an unnecessary distraction."

"Is that what you call it? A distraction?" Nyota said with what he recognized as mock indignation. Then her tone grew serious. "Really, I think he's going to bolt if we don't do something soon."

"I fail to see how either you or I can influence his decision to stay to leave."

Another sigh, and then she said, "I don't either. But you thought he was worth giving a chance to. You saw some promise in him in London."

That's so, Spock thinks now as he watches Chekov shift in his seat.

"Cadet Uhura tells me that you may have an unreasonable attachment to your place of origin," Spock says, "and that the contrast with your present circumstances is contributing to your dissatisfaction."

"Sir?"

"You miss your home," Spock says. If Chekov looked sad before, his expression darkens to mournful.

"Is nice here," he says, darting a glance at Spock, "but not like home."

Standing, Spock says, "In my experience, Cadet Chekov, no place is exactly like home."

He takes a step toward the door of the lab before turning back and motioning to Chekov to follow him. Scrambling to his feet, Chekov says, "Now? Come with you?"

Instead of answering, Spock heads down the corridor to the stairwell, taking the three flights down so swiftly that he is waiting by the outside door by the time Chekov catches up.

"Where we going?" Chekov says breathlessly, and Spock points to the hover bus shelter in the distance.

"To wait for the 1815 off-campus transport," he says, walking across the commons towards the shelter. "No place is exactly like home, but I believe I may have a solution to your perceived lack of _fun_."

At his elbow, he can sense Chekov's confusion. Looking down, he confirms it—the young man is frowning as he jogs to keep up.

Almost as soon as they arrive at the bus shelter, the hover bus itself comes into view, and when it pulls up, Spock enters it and sits on the aisle. Still looking puzzled, Chekov follows and sits across from him.

"Our journey will not take long," Spock says as the bus moves forward. "In the meantime, my own experiences when I first arrived at the Academy might prove instructive."

X X X X X

_How to explain? _

Spock looked down at the flimplast he had just been handed and set his duffel on the floor of the crowded wardroom. Behind him a line of cadets snaked around the room toward the door. Ahead of him was a midshipman in charge of dorm operations standing at a computer monitor. Glancing up at Spock, the tall blonde man frowned.

"Is there a problem?"

"There is another student assigned to my room."

"Yeah, so? That's your roommate."

The midshipman craned his neck and looked past Spock, a dismissal. Spock took one step forward.

"I specified a private room."

Flicking his eyes back to Spock, the blonde midshipman said, "Doesn't matter what you _specified_. This is what you got. Now, there are other people waiting."

For a moment Spock debated whether or not to continue the conversation. Although the midshipman was handing out the assignments, the odds were high that someone else had actually made them.

"I need to speak to the officer who made this assignment," Spock said. From behind him he heard the level of ambient noise in the wardroom drop by a factor of two.

"Oh, you do, do you?" the midshipman behind the computer console said.

"I believe I said that."

The noise level in the room fell to zero.

The midshipman placed his hands flat on the desk and leaned forward.

"Maybe you are confused," he said, his voice several decibels louder than before, "but this isn't a hotel. This is Starfleet Academy. If you don't want to be a member of the corps, then turn around and walk back out."

_How to explain?_

How to explain the importance of privacy to a Vulcan—not out of some desire for personal comfort, but a very real need for quiet and meditation? Not to mention the difficulty the differences in his sleep requirements might pose for a typical human roommate?

Further discussion with the midshipman in charge of assignments was clearly illogical. Spock picked up his duffel and made his way through the wardroom to the stairwell and the dorm rooms beyond.

Perhaps, he thought as he climbed the five flights, a solution was possible. Not all humans were particular about their circadian rhythms. His cousin Chris, for example, away at the Mars Institute, kept an unusual sleep cycle since he left home—an artifact of university life? Although Spock's mother protested when she didn't get enough sleep, younger humans didn't seem to mind staying up for long increments and then balancing the equation with equally long sleep sessions.

Or if his human roommate objected, perhaps another roommate who shared his schedule could be found? After all, a sizable minority of cadets were off-worlders, though Spock knew that no other Vulcans were enrolled.

His resolve to make the best of the situation fled when he saw his room. His roommate wasn't there but his stuff was—strewn all over the floor and on both bunks. Clothes, PADDS, old-fashioned bound books, wadded up sheets and towels—Spock took one look around the room and turned on his heel.

The wardroom was still crowded with cadets waiting in line for room assignments. If the midshipman manning the computer console noticed him making his way out, he didn't give any indication.

The office of the brigade commander was in the main administration building near the south gate of the campus. Like many of the civilian workers Spock had seen on campus, the receptionist was human—a woman close to his mother's age. She blinked twice when Spock told her he needed to see someone about his room, but she didn't argue with him, and in a few minutes she motioned to him and led him down a short hallway to a small office.

Inside was a gray-haired man wearing a Starfleet uniform.

"Sit down, Cadet," he said, looking up from the PADD on his desk, and Spock shifted his duffel to the floor.

"State your concern," the brigade commander said_. Finally, someone who was unemotional and to the point._ Spock felt his shoulders relax.

"I require a private room," he said, "but I have been assigned a roommate."

The brigade commander looked at him, silent and unblinking. For a moment, Spock was nonplussed. Had the commander misunderstood him? Unlikely. What then?

At times like this when he had trouble with human interactions, Spock had learned that silence was often the best option. Certainly that was true when dealing with his mother. More than once she had scolded him for speaking too soon, for rushing to judgment and assuming to know what she would prefer without asking her first.

His habit of disappearing for several days to go hiking in the mountains without alerting her to his plans, for instance…her ire at not being forewarned, of not knowing the particulars.

"I did not tell you because I did not want to you worry," he told her the last time he had returned after three days of camping in the The Forge.

"I _was_ worried!" she said hotly. "Not just about your safety, but wondering _where_ you were! You _doubled_ my worry!"

Now he waited for the brigade commander to reply.

Tapping the PADD with his stylus, the commander looked up and said, "Yes, I see that you did request a room to yourself. Obviously that had to be denied."

"Explain please," Spock said at once.

The commander's eyes widened and he said, "Cadet, when you accepted your position at the Academy, you also accepted a position in your company, in your battalion, in your regiment, in the corps. Starfleet isn't a bunch of individuals going their own way but a group of people dedicated to a common purpose. That includes learning to work together…and that starts with learning to live with your roommate."

Fighting back a flash of irritation, Spock said, "Sir, I understand how the Academy is organized. I would not have applied for admission if I didn't accept the goals as my own. But I do not make my request lightly. I believe I can be a part without sharing a room—"

"Cadet," the commander said, crossing his arms and tilting his head. "I must not be making myself clear. Starfleet doesn't need you if you aren't able to function as a member of the team. What do you think the crew of a starship is if it isn't a team?"

"But I require—"

"You are dismissed," the commander said, and Spock took a breath and picked his duffel from the floor.

By the end of that first week the commander's words seemed prophetic and leaving the Academy a very real possibility. His roommate was, in fact, a pleasant enough young man who was more surprised than dismayed to have a Vulcan roommate. Apparently able to sleep through Spock's wakefulness, he was equally unaffected by Spock's requests that he tidy up his side of the room.

Neither the physical training nor the academic classes were especially taxing, but when Spock called his mother after that first week, she noticed his exhaustion immediately.

"Meditation is impossible," he explained, secretly gratified that she was as annoyed as he was about his lack of privacy.

"Your father could call someone," she said, and Spock raised his hand to the subspace screen and said, "Mother, that would be unacceptable. This is my problem and I will deal with it."

She had frowned at him but promised not to mention anything to Sarek.

Spock had never gone an entire week without meditating. His thoughts were less focused, his reaction times slower. In desperation, he lit a candle—a poor substitute for his _asenoi_—and sat cross-legged on his bed the next time his roommate was out.

It was hopeless. Two cadets were using the hallway to test a new frictionless compound that they sprayed on their socks, running and sliding past Spock's door to the cheers of onlookers. Each time someone bumped the door handle, he jumped, expecting his roommate to return. And as usual, the temperature of the room was chilly and the moisture level excessive.

By the end of the second week, even he could hear how abrupt he sounded when he spoke, how unvarnished his annoyance was. His mother commented on it right away.

"You don't sound like yourself," she said, a worried look crossing her brow. "Has something else happened?"

"Mother," he said, and then he fell silent. Amanda continued to peer at him intently.

"Have you asked—"

"I have," he said curtly, and shortly afterward he made an excuse to go.

The next day he was heading to the morning meal—an almost useless exercise, he thought with real anger, given the paltry number of meatless options—when his comm chimed. A message from the brigade commander's office—a notice that he was being reassigned to a different room effective immediately.

Had his roommate lodged a protest and requested a change? That was unlikely. The midshipman on duty in the wardroom couldn't answer any questions either, just saying that he had been told to issue him a key.

The relief he felt when he swiped the key card and opened the door to his new room was immense—and startling. Until he shut the door behind him and sat down heavily on the empty bunk, he hadn't realized how miserable, how needy, he had been. Instead of going to breakfast, he lit his candle and sat on the floor beside it, his back straight, his hands folded in front of him. He felt himself sinking into the first level of meditation almost immediately.

He was about to enter the second level when he opened his eyes with a start.

_Sarek._ His father must have intervened. As the Ambassador from Vulcan, he knew some of the Starfleet authorities, would have known who to talk to.

For a moment Spock struggled with competing desires. On one hand, the privacy of the room was…if not _bliss_, then his approximation of it.

On the other hand, he was determined to chart his own course without his father's interference.

He stood up and walked to the subspace console mounted on the desk in the corner.

"You asked me not to say anything to your father," Amanda protested when he called her. "You said you could handle things on your own."

"As I shall," Spock said, reaching forward to end the transmission, but his mother added, "Now maybe you can gain back that weight you've lost. You look too thin. And too pale."

"The meditation will help," Spock agreed, and again he reached forward to toggle off the transmission but was stopped by his mother's voice.

"Are you eating enough?" she asked, but instead of answering, he tilted his head and said, "Mother, I have to go."

Two days later the first package arrived, his mother's handwriting on the outside giving him an unexpected spasm of longing to see her. _Homesickness_, she had called it—moments when nostalgia for family overrode any other desire.

Inside the small package was an assortment of dried fruits and vegetables—_kasa_ and _fori_ and _marak _and even some sliced _plomeek. _Seeing them conjured up an indescribable feeling, an unnamed emotion that was a paradox of pleasure and sorrow.

"Just a little something to tide you over," she said when he called to thank her, though later he realized that she hadn't explained what the package was supposed to tide him over _to_.

To the next package, apparently. Three days later he received another package from home, this time filled with seasonal nuts and berries.

"They were on sale at the market," his mother explained. "The last time I spoke to Chris, he asked me to send him some. I thought I might as well send some to you."

"It isn't necessary, Mother," Spock told her. "The cafeteria provides adequate nutrition."

It was true. Just yesterday Spock had noted an increase in the vegetarian selections—and not just that, but an increase in off-world specialties. The Andorian cadet ahead of him in line at lunch had seemed excited to find a native stew on the menu.

Now that he was able to meditate regularly, Spock's focus returned, and with it, his appetite improved and he was better able to tolerate the change from Vulcan's dry heat to San Francisco's cool wet climate, something his mother had warned him about.

"I was always cold when we lived there," she said the next time they spoke by subspace, "and your father complained all the time."

"Vulcans do not complain," Spock said drily, and Amanda laughed.

"Oh, no," she said. "They never _complain_. But they comment on things they dislike—and comment, and comment, and comment, until you want to pull your hair out!"

His mother's words were in jest but Spock admitted to himself that she wasn't wrong. Each week he had submitted a request for a temperature control override for his room—and each week it was denied. _Because of the cost? The difficulty of reconfiguring the gauge for a single room in a large dorm?_ No explanation was ever given.

And then one day when he returned from his modular physics seminar he saw two maintenance men exiting his room, one carrying a large tool box, the other a ladder. Catching a glimpse of him in the corridor, one of the workmen called out, "We're all done here."

"Explain the nature of the repairs to my room," Spock said, and the workman gave him an odd look. _Perhaps he should have introduced himself first?_ Yet another occasion when interacting with unfamiliar humans was problematic.

"The new thermostat," the workman said. "Enjoy your sauna!"

Entering the room, Spock saw the new temperature control mounted near the door, and underneath it, a boxlike dehumidifier. For a moment he stood transfixed—and then with a flick of his wrist, he turned the switch and stretched out on his bunk. Within minutes he was warm and dry—the first time since he had arrived a few weeks ago.

The rest of that first semester flew by—not without some of what his mother called _bumps in the road_—but tolerable. By the time the corps hosted their first family visitation day, Spock felt he could face his parents with a measure of equanimity.

The large meeting hall where cadets and their families could mingle was tricked out in Starfleet regalia. Tables were pushed to wall and burdened with finger foods and beverages. Professors and officers stood around chatting with students and their parents.

From the corner of his eye, Spock saw the brigade commander walking in his direction. Since their meeting in his office the first day, Spock had not spoken to him personally, though he had once overheard the commander mention him in passing. As the only Vulcan cadet, Spock was used to being recognized. No matter where he was, he thought ruefully, he was always going to be the oddity in the crowd.

"Cadet Spock," the brigade commander said, sidling up to him, "are your parents here?"

"Not yet, Commander," he said, "though they both indicated that they would attend."

"I'm looking forward to meeting the Ambassador in person," the commander said. "After all those conversations we had."

"Sir?"

"At the beginning of the semester. Very helpful, actually."

"I apologize, sir," Spock said, "but I am unaware—"

"Like I said," the commander went on, "it was a helpful reminder of what Starfleet is all about. It's easy to get so caught up in following rules and regulations that you forget why you have them in the first place."

Spock struggled to keep the confusion off his face. Was it possible that the beverage the commander was holding in a small, clear cup in his hand was intoxicating him? Making him speak nonsense? Spock had witnessed that sort of intoxication before, most recently at an off-campus social event he had been required to attend.

"Sir, I—"

"Look around you," the commander said, and Spock turned his gaze slowly in the direction the commander was pointing. "What do you see? People from all over. Humans, of course, but Andorians, and Tellarites, and Denobulans and Orions. People from all over the Federation, working for a common goal. Unified, yes, but diverse, too. We can't lose sight of that. If we do, we forget what the Federation is."

Spock nodded, not sure how to respond. The commander evidently took that as a sign to continue.

"That's what the Ambassador reminded me," he said. "Oh, I think I gave you a hard time right there at the start—you remember, about the room."

"Yes, sir," Spock said, baffled.

"I'm embarrassed that I had lost sight of our diversity," the commander said, "and the need to balance our corporate and individual lives. The issues of housing, and food, and the environmental controls—conformity isn't always a virtue, not when it creates barriers that keep us from working together. That's what the Ambassador kept pointing out. We had several long conversations about it earlier in the year."

As the commander spoke, Spock felt the hair on the back of his neck begin to prickle. He recalled with perfect clarity his mother's words when he had questioned her: _You asked me not to tell your father.  
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He had missed it then, the way she had misdirected him, not answering his query. Not _I didn't tell your father_. Just a restatement of the facts, the way a Vulcan would lie: _You asked me not to tell your father. _No reassurance that she hadn't spoken to his father after all.

"Sarek contacted you about the room and the food selections? About the temperature controls?"

The commander took a sip of his drink and said, "Sarek? I don't know anyone named Sarek. I'm talking about your mother, the Ambassador."

X X X X

"That's the first time he's looked happy in weeks," Nyota says, swaying back and darting a glance across the large gym where Chekov sits at a long table, elbows propped, his chin in his hands. On the other side of the table is a small boy, 9 or 10 years old, his hand hovering over a chessboard.

As he watches, Spock realizes that Nyota's assessment of Chekov's improved mood appears accurate. The cadet is smiling broadly and keeping up a running patter of advice.

"Watch it!" Spock hears him tell the boy getting ready to pick up a knight. "Is trick. Think again what you should do."

All around the gym are other players, most of them school children, but also older adolescents and adults serving as coaches and chess instructors. For the past two years Spock has tutored several high school students here every other Wednesday evening, a community outreach project that he had taken on reluctantly and only at the insistence of the Academy Dean, but which, when he is honest with himself, he has found pleasure in doing.

More than pleasure. A sense of fulfillment and purpose, teaching young people how to think strategically, logically.

For the last two months since the disciplinary hearing Nyota has joined him here, occasionally playing a match with one of the students, but mostly sitting on the sidelines watching him coach someone else—and feeling her presence has been a pleasure, too.

The large high school gym across town is one place they feel free to be in public together—away from the scrutiny of the campus. Bent over their games, the other players rarely pay them much attention, and in the crowded, echoing room, they are sometimes able to sit side-by-side on the bleachers along one wall and talk with relative privacy, the way they do now.

"Whatever you told him," Nyota says, "seems to be working."

"I told him very little," Spock says. At the table, Chekov lifts his palm and slaps it against the palm of the little boy_. A congratulatory motion?_

Obviously so. The boy grins and rises, and a little girl sits in his place. Chekov stands and bows with exaggerated grace, eliciting a laugh.

"You must have told him something," Nyota says, and Spock replies, "I shared some of my own difficulties adjusting to life at the Academy. That is all."

"Hmm," Nyota says. "Now what could those be, I wonder? You had already studied all the advanced math and computer classes they had to offer?"

"As a school child on Vulcan."

"The physical training wasn't rigorous enough for you? You wanted to run a marathon every morning before breakfast?"

"And another in the evening."

She laughs then, fluttering his heart in his side.

"Well," she says, leaning close, "you seem to have adjusted."

"With my mother's help," he says. Nyota raises an eyebrow in surprise and he adds, "She knew what I needed to feel at home."

He doesn't elaborate. There is Chekov, happy for now, making himself useful, practicing his Standard, feeling more at home for all that. A simple solution to bring him here, to connect him with people who make him feel capable, wanted.

And for himself? Now?

Suddenly he's weary of the noisy gym, of being so physically close and yet unable to touch Nyota.

Soon enough she'll take a transport back to the campus, and he will collect Chekov and take a different transport later. He and Nyota may go days without another glimpse of each other—their only contact by a comm registered to his cousin Chris.

That vision of the future rises up before him like something damp and dark and unwanted, and almost impulsively he says, "At this time of the year, Eridani is visible after 2300. If you care to join me, I will be at the waterfront—if the cloud cover isn't excessive."

"At the waterfront?" Nyota says, eyeing him carefully. "Near the Anchor Hotel?"

"Eridani is easiest to see from that end of the walkway."

"If the cloud cover isn't excessive."

"Precisely," he says, and she quirks her lip and says, "And if it is? What would we do then?"

She phrases it as a question—and a teasing one at that—but she's really telling him that she understands what he is saying.

That he wants to see his home star tonight—that he's feeling, for lack of a better word, as _homesick_ as Chekov.

That he wants her company—not just for stargazing, but later, at the hotel where they've dared to stay once before, when being apart had become almost physically painful.

A risk, but a calculated one.

And to his mind worth it. A few hours cobbled together to feel what it means to be at home—not because he is warm and dry or sated or even happy in the way humans use the word—but because he will be with her, not needing anything else.

**A/N: Thanks to everyone for staying the course! Your reviews keep me going!**


	15. It Takes a Thief

**Chapter 15: It Takes a Thief**

**Disclaimer: Don't own, dagnabbit.**

Even before the shuttle lands, Spock knows Nyota will be here at the transport station. When they spoke by comm last night—he in crew quarters at Riverside Shipyard in Iowa where he had spent three days overseeing the engine room baffle plate installation on the _Enterprise_, she back in San Francisco at the Academy—she had hinted that she might be.

Just a quick comment—nothing specific—but he is so certain that she is here that he scans the crowd waiting at the edge of the landing pad and is genuinely surprised when he doesn't see her.

Still, the sensation remains. She's here somewhere. Illogical to jump to that conclusion with no data, and yet—

"Looking for someone?" a voice at his elbow says, and he looks down at the upturned face of Natalie Jolsen, Captain Pike's adjutant. She's at Riverside more often than not, overseeing much of the construction details. When she boarded the return shuttle in Iowa and saw Spock already seated, he had an uneasy moment when he thought she might sit beside him—not that she is overly familiar or pushy, but since his disciplinary hearing he has felt awkward around her.

Her question now, for instance. Is she making what his mother calls _small talk_ or is it hitched to a warning?

He decides to dodge it altogether.

"Do you require assistance?" he says, offering to take her travel bag.

"Thank you." Not touching his hand, Natalie releases her grip on the handle. Her care is deliberate—and appreciated. He feels another twinge of uneasiness, this time because he suspects the awkwardness between them since the disciplinary hearing is actually one-sided and unfair on his part.

They follow the crowd of passengers from the shuttle pad toward the hover bus stop at the far end of the transport station. The sun is so low on the horizon that the bus shelter casts deep shadows across the walkway.

From the corner of his eye Spock sees one of the shadows bobble and weave. Nyota, standing almost out of sight near the side of the shelter. As he draws closer, he sees Natalie catch sight of her, too.

"I can take it from here," she says, lifting her hand for her bag. "I don't have that far to go."

In the deep afternoon sunlight her hair—a short, tangled bob tucked behind her ears—is brilliant red, her cheeks pink. He hears her sigh as she swings her bag forward and says, "Don't work too late, Commander. You need to get to bed."

More small talk? Or a _double entendre_?

She disappears into the crowd as Nyota steps out of the shadows and pauses several feet away.

In the distance the hover bus approaches and the passengers bunch up in a line at the edge of the road. Nyota darts a look over her shoulder and says, "Do you mind walking?"

Without saying anything else, they turn toward the sidewalk and walk like strangers, Nyota ten meters ahead of him—at least until they are out of sight of the Starfleet personnel and crew waiting for the hover bus. When they round a corner Spock is almost disappointed—watching Nyota's cadence and the sway of her hips from this vantage point is…pleasing.

"I brought it to show you," she says as he lengthens his stride and comes up beside her. For a moment she fumbles with the latch on her handbag and then pulls out a square of hard crimson plastic the size of her outstretched hand.

Taking the square and holding it up to the light, Spock says, "It does look authentic. See. Orion clan missives always include the family signet. This one says Farlijah-Endef."

"So it really was meant for Gaila?" Nyota says, slipping the plastic square back into her bag.

"From her clan leader, most likely," Spock says.

Two days ago Nyota had returned to her room and found the red square in the mail slot beside the door. At first she had dismissed it as the odd piece of junk mail, but when she held it up to the light, she noticed an unfamiliar delicately carved script on one side.

She hadn't intended to intrude, but by the time she had parsed out the fact that the script was Orion, she knew the gist of the contents. That's when she had called Spock.

"I think it's a demand that she return home and assume some role in the syndicate," she told him, her voice as agitated as he could ever remember hearing. "But it isn't addressed to anyone, and it isn't signed. They can't force her to leave the Academy, can they?"

"Why not ask Cadet Farlijah-Endef herself?" Spock had replied, but Nyota harrumphed loudly into the comm.

"First of all, she's not here this weekend," she said. "She and Denny are with Professor Sarsis in Paris working out the tech specs for the linguistics conference next week. And secondly, what if someone is trying to force her to leave? Starfleet is where she wants to be, not part of some Orion slave syndicate! That isn't fair!"

"The cadet does not belong to a clan that condones human trafficking," Spock had replied as calmly as he could, but Nyota wasn't mollified. In the end, Spock had agreed to ask his father what he knew about Orion customs.

Sarek knew quite a lot, in fact. The red square was a traditional clan missive, a directive from a clan leader to a subordinate. The missives were usually handed directly to the intended reader whose touch was programmed to automatically send an acknowledgement of receipt. Then the reader was required to answer the missive within a particular amount of time, though Sarek wasn't sure how long.

"Perhaps if I knew who the intended recipient was," Sarek said, "I could find out more information for you."

For a moment Spock hesitated. Speaking of Gaila meant speaking of Nyota, if only to mention that they were roommates.

And speaking of Nyota—

He wasn't sure how to begin that conversation with his parents.

They've never talked about the disciplinary hearing, at least not directly. His parents respect his privacy—or his father does. His mother's silence has a sense of watchfulness behind it, as if she is waiting for the right moment to ask the questions Spock knows she wants answered.

He braces himself each time he calls, but when their conversations stray too close to things he'd rather not discuss, he becomes noticeably skittish and she backpedals, changing the topic so he doesn't have to. He recognizes this for what it is—kindness, and her respect for his dignity.

His cousin Chris had been at the hearing and would have told them the details—how when he was pressed by Admiral Komack, Spock admitted to the relationship with Nyota, and how the nine-member board then decided that his actions, while ill advised, did not rise to the level of fraternization.

A reprieve of sorts—with a warning to cease and desist.

Which, of course, he has ignored. Will continue to ignore.

"I am uncertain who the recipient is," Spock told his father—not a lie, not precisely.

"Unfortunate," Sarek said matter-of-factly, and Spock had the sudden insight that his mother would not have been so credulous.

"It takes a thief to catch a thief," she told him more than once when he tried to hide something from her. "There's no dodge you can pull that I haven't mastered long ago."

Nyota frowns and crosses her arms as she walks.

"What I don't understand," she says, "is why now? Gaila said that when she applied to Starfleet, her uncle didn't seem to care. Why tell her to come home now, when she's so close to graduating?"

"Her uncle is her clan leader?"

"I think so," Nyota says. "She told me that he adopted her when she was really young. Her sisters, too. They all live at the same family compound. Or she did. Before she came here."

"My father told me that in Orion tradition, all of the children belong to the clan leader. It is his responsibility to raise them and assign employment for them—"

"Forced servitude!"

"Not from the Orion point of view," Spock says evenly. "The children's needs are provided for. Usually they are required to repay the clan by working for the syndicate when they come of age."

"Without any choice!"

"I merely describe the system," Spock says, "not condone it."

At that Nyota uncrosses her arms and says, "But they don't care what Gaila does. Or they didn't care. Why call her home now?"

"You said it earlier," Spock says, brushing his hand along the back of Nyota's arm, a signal to cross the street. "This is her last year at the Academy. In seven months she will know her future posting, at which time she will be considered an adult by Orion standards. The clan leader will be unable to assign her syndicate work if she is gainfully employed elsewhere. He won't be able to recall her."

"What do you mean?" Nyota says, looking at him closely. "She's already been recalled. That's what's in the missive, remember?"

Of course he remembers. The comment from anyone else would be a slight. From her it is a measure of her frustration.

"Not until she reads it," he says, and Nyota tips her head in his direction and says, "Explain," in such an uncanny impression of him that he struggles not to look amused.

"Until she reads the missive, the clan leader is not legally able to act on it."

"Until she touches it, you mean."

"Indeed," Spock says, looking up briefly as a noisy flitter rumbles overhead. "Her touch triggers the countdown until she is required to fulfill the demands in the letter."

"But if she doesn't touch it?"

"As far as the clan leader is concerned, she has not read it until then."

"I could just tell her what's in the letter."

"That is one choice you have."

"But if I do, she might think she should go on home now."

"That is a possibility."

"It's so unfair. She's worked so hard!" Nyota says plaintively. Her obvious anguish is like a jolt in his side.

For several minutes they walk steadily without talking. The sun dips below the horizon and Spock slips his jacket off and settles it on Nyota's shoulders when he sees her shivering in the breeze.

"You do have other options," he says. Another loud flitter—with a loose muffle plate, obviously—makes him pause before continuing, but before he can, she says, "I could throw the missive away."

"You could."

"Of course, that's technically stealing," she adds, and he says, "And destruction of private property."

"And she night need it later for some reason that I can't foresee."

"Agreed."

"Or I could wait and give it to her later."

"She will still be required to fulfill the demands."

"You said not if she's employed, remember?"

Instead of answering, he gives her a jaundiced look and she smiles, the first time today.

"I know, you remember. What if I give it to her in March, after the postings are finalized?"

"She might still feel compelled to do her clan leader's bidding."

"She might," Nyota says, her frown this time looking more thoughtful than distressed. "But at least she would have a choice. She could stay in Starfleet or go do whatever drudgery they cook up for her back home."

"They might offer her employment she would welcome," Spock says, intentionally tweaking her now that her mood is lightening.

"What are the odds of that?" she says, and then she adds, "No, don't tell me."

She slides her hand around his arm and walks so closely that he feels the prickle of her electricity all along his side.

"What I'm thinking of doing isn't even ethical," she says slowly, her voice a mixture of sadness and wonder.

"But perhaps called for," Spock says, and he feels her shift her gaze suddenly to his face. Her own face is in shadow but he can see the glimmer of her eyes searching out his own.

"Do you think so?"

Does he? He pauses and considers.

In the past few months he has worked with Cadet Farlijah-Endef on the _Kobayashi Maru_ upgrade, first letting her work on the code refinements but lately giving her more responsibility with the scenario edit. Having another mind so unlike his own working on the simulation has given it far more complexity, something he should have anticipated but didn't, a lesson he resolves to take with him to his work with Captain Pike on the _Enterprise_.

Cadet Farlijah-Endef is bright, creative, energetic—someone who will serve well on a starship if given the chance. If withholding the missive from her helps her achieve her goal, wouldn't it be justified?

They've been walking for 23 minutes, 14% slower than he could have made the journey alone. If they continue to walk, they won't arrive at the Academy for another 40 minutes at the earliest. They _could_ catch a hover bus now with less risk of being seen and be outside the west gate within minutes.

On the other hand, efficiency and speed aren't always preferable.

"What do you think I should do?" Nyota asks, leaning into him as they walk along a curve in the road, the only light the headlamps of passing ground cars.

"You must decide," he says, hearing her snort once.

Shoving her shoulder into his side she says, "You're no help."

"But my mother might be," he says. "Since you are contemplating thievery, let me tell you her experience."

X X X X X X

It never failed. Invariably the house comm chimed when Amanda was heading out the door to pick Sybok and Spock up from school. Usually the caller could be dealt with quickly and she would find the boys not far from the school, walking with their heads tucked down against the prevailing afternoon wind. They didn't mind the walk—or they said they didn't—but she was so busy these days with her own work at the teacher training center that she jealously guarded even the few minutes they had together in the flitter rides home.

"We're just like ships passing in the night," she would say, knowing the metaphor was an odd one for a desert planet, shaking her head on those all too rare afternoons when she could sit at the kitchen table with Sybok and Spock after they got home, a plate of sliced fruit set out as a snack, and tease out of them what they were up to these days.

Tease out of _Spock_, that is. Sybok was always open and willing to share with her.

She was slipping a travel cloak around her shoulders when the voice recorder in Sarek's study picked up. With an about face, Amanda headed swiftly to the study and clicked on the viewscreen.

There was Sybok's maternal grandmother, T'Ria, a woman Amanda could remember speaking to directly only two or three times. Her face was unusually sallow and pinched, her thin, gray hair pulled back into a severe bun.

"I must speak to Sarek," she said by way of greeting. Whether she was being intentionally rude was hard to judge. Amanda had lived on Vulcan long enough to know that the myth of Vulcan indifference was just that, a myth, and that what off-worlders sometimes chalked up to stoicism was really just bad manners.

"Lady T'Ria," Amanda said, biting back her annoyance and trying to sound gracious, "how good it is to see you. I hope you are well."

"I am dying," T'Ria said without changing her expression. "That is why I must speak to Sarek."

For a moment Amanda was too flustered to say anything. Although Sarek and T'Ria shared legal custody of Sybok, they almost never communicated except to discuss his schedule or travel arrangements. Even that communication had been hard won, and only after Sarek and Amanda took T'Ria to court shortly after their bonding ceremony.

Sybok spent part of each school year living with Amanda and Sarek and the rest with his grandmother. If he minded such a vagabond life, he didn't object. Once he told Amanda that since his mother had died when he was two, he felt an obligation to offer his grandmother some company and comfort.

Sarek was less generous when he spoke about T'Ria, and though he didn't express his anger openly, Amanda sensed it—and sometimes cautioned him about slipping up and letting Sybok feel it.

"He's in a difficult enough position as it is," she said. "He doesn't need to feel torn between you two."

Now here T'Ria was, as imperious as ever.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Amanda said, genuinely grieved. _One more loss in Sybok's life. _"Sarek is off planet until next week, but if you have access to subspace communications, you can reach him."

"I do not," T'Ria said, leaning forward. "Nor do I have time to arrange it. You may give him my message. It concerns Sybok. I have in my possession his mother's journal and some other effects that he should have. Please see that he gets them."

"But surely you would prefer to give them to him personally. I'll make travel arrangements—"

"My healer advises me," T'Ria said, "that there is insufficient time."

"I'm so sorry—"

"So you said. Also, be aware that Sybok may be contacted by former…associates…of his mother. They are legally barred from approaching him as long as I am alive, but now they may attempt it."

"I don't understand," Amanda said, her heart beating hard. "Who are they? Why were they barred? Are they dangerous?"

T'Ria closed her eyes and took a visible breath.

"Sarek can explain," she said. "He is the reason my daughter became involved with the _v'tosh ka'tur_. If he had taken his rightful place at her side she would still be alive—"

A fit of coughing interrupted T'Ria and she turned away from the viewscreen. Silently Amanda fumed. Sarek hadn't told her much about his relationship with Sybok's mother except that she had been unwilling to live with him or marry him, even after Sybok's birth.

When she regained her composure, T'Ria said, "It's up to you now. Protect Sybok. Don't let his penchant for emotion lead him astray as it did his mother."

And with that, the viewscreen went dark.

Amanda's head was whirling. Of course she knew of the _v'tosh ka'tur_, the Vulcans without logic—the seekers of experience and sensation. Scandalous by most accounts. Frighteningly persuasive.

So Sybok's mother had been a member of the group? Or had been sympathetic to them? How had that contributed to her death? Sarek had hinted that she had been suicidal. Could her death have been the result of something criminal?

Amanda felt sick thinking about it.

And now the _v'tosh ka'tur_ were going to approach Sybok? Not as long as he lived here they weren't, not if doing so caused him any harm.

She had a sudden image of Sybok and Spock walking home from school, alone on the side of the road, exposed, vulnerable. Her stomach did a flip and she stood up suddenly, grabbed her travel cloak from the back of the chair, and pivoted around—only to see Sybok and Spock standing in the study doorway.

"How long have you been here!" she exclaimed, looking from one boy to the other. At fourteen, Sybok was already as tall as he would be as an adult and almost as stocky. Seven years younger, Spock had recently gone through a growth spurt and was lean and wiry for his age. They glanced at each other briefly and then Sybok said, "We arrived home 6.47 minutes ago."

"Did you hear—"

She let her words drift off, watching Sybok's face carefully. A shadow crossed his expression and he nodded. At his side, Spock dipped his head.

In three steps Amanda covered the distance to the door. Placing her hands on Sybok's shoulders, she said, "I'm sorry. I wish you hadn't heard that. She didn't mean what she said about your father. She's old and sick and upset, that's all."

Sybok nodded again—not, Amanda knew, because he believed her, but because he didn't want to contradict her. Of course his grandmother blamed Sarek for her daughter's death. She wouldn't have said it otherwise.

Bad enough that Sybok had overheard. If Sarek heard the accusation—Amanda knew he already blamed himself. No reason to bowl him over with more recriminations.

"Sybok," she said, looking at him carefully, "your father doesn't need to hear that either."

A terrible price to exact for his silence—keeping a secret from Sarek—but Amanda couldn't bear to widen the circle of pain.

Later that night when she spoke to Sarek at last, Amanda was relieved that he offered to cut his trip short and come home early. Although he didn't say so, she knew he was also anxious that the _v'tosh ka'tur_ might feel emboldened to approach Sybok now that his grandmother's death was imminent.

"But why would they even want to?" Amanda asked, and he said cryptically, "His mother would have desired it."

Two days later the package containing Sybok's mother's things arrived—and with it, a note from a family retainer indicating that his grandmother had died the same day she had spoken to Amanda. Before she went to bed that night, Amanda caught a glimpse of Sarek sitting at the desk in his study, the package opened on his desk, a book in his hand. _The journal._ Amanda was surprised to feel a stab of jealousy.

Sensing her in the corridor, Sarek looked back and motioned to her. She stepped up beside him and hazarded a glance down. Sarek's fingers were draped around a thick book bound in a stiff green fabric.

"Do you really think he should read that?" she said, and she felt Sarek's despair like a wave through their bond. No words, but a cascade of emotions—dismay and shame among them.

"It belongs to him," he said, replacing the book in the box. "I will give it to him one day."

_Do you have to?_ Amanda called out silently, but Sarek could not—or would not—answer.

For the next several weeks they both were jumpy, anxious when the comm chimed and careful to supervise the boys' travel back and forth to school. Sarek spoke privately to the headmaster and canceled a lengthy out-of-town meeting.

Eventually, however, life returned to normal, and Amanda again tried to cadge little measures of time in the afternoons and evenings when she could reconnect with the boys, listening to accounts of their day, corralling them in the kitchen to help with dinner.

She was particularly attentive to Sybok, aware that losing his grandmother dredged up his earlier feelings of loss about his mother. On the surface Sybok seemed fine—busy at school and content enough at home, but his unhappiness bubbled under the surface of the family bond, like pebbles in a stream.

"You know," she said one night as they finished their evening meal, "we ought to invite that new teacher you like so much over for dinner."

Sybok's eyes lit up. Professor Robinson was a human teaching comparative literature in an exchange program at their school. It was true that most Vulcans preferred the hard sciences and mathematics to literature or mythology, but Sybok was in the minority who read widely and found pleasure in sharing what he read. Since Professor Robinson had come to the school at the beginning of the new term, Amanda had noticed a definite uptick in Sybok's mood, and if for no other reason, she wanted to do something nice for the teacher.

From the corner of the table Spock watched the exchange with undisguised skepticism, such a counterpoint to his older brother that Amanda laughed. How odd that her outgoing stepson should be so much more like her in every way than her own more serious, quiet child.

Professor Robinson proved to be good company. A tall, bushy-haired redhead, he wore old-fashioned spectacles that gave him an owlish appearance that Amanda found endearing. Over the next few months, she invited him several times for a meal, and even Sarek seemed to find pleasure in the wide range of topics they discussed over the table.

"Before I came to Vulcan," Professor Robinson said, shoving his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose, "I was warned not to talk while eating. I thought silence at the table was a tradition."

"A tradition," Amanda said, darting a look in Sarek's direction, "is not the same thing as a rule, especially when humans are involved."

"I see what you mean, Sybok," Professor Robinson said, catching Sybok's eye across the table. "Lady Amanda is indeed a very wise woman."

Amanda felt the warmth of affection and she looked up in time to see Sybok flash her the trace of a smile.

By the end of the term, she had read most of the books Professor Robinson assigned his students, not just because she was curious about his choices, but because it gave her an opportunity to engage Sybok in the kind of long, detailed analysis that offered him a distraction from the steady undercurrent of grief nagging him. When the class was winding down and the professor prepared to return to Earth, she shared Sybok's wistful sorrow.

And then everything fell apart.

Right after the first round of exams, Professor Robinson called the parents of his students to a meeting at school. Someone had stolen the flimplast posted outside his office door listing the exam grades. Identified only by student numbers to insure anonymity, the grades were always posted this way before the final assessments were computed—mostly as a courtesy so students wouldn't have to wait until after the upcoming break to measure their success or lack of it.

The students and their parents, including Sarek and Amanda, listened as Professor Robinson spoke slowly, solemnly, his eyes oddly magnified by his glasses.

"The grades were there yesterday morning," he said. "And then they were gone two hours later. Someone took them. Stole them. I'm shocked that this has happened here, on Vulcan."

A tremor rippled around the room—surprise, certainly, but something else Amanda couldn't name. Embarrassment? Vulcan pride? An annoyance that a human would call a Vulcan to task—even an unnamed thief?

No one said a word.

"I invite whoever took the grades to explain the reason why," Professor Robinson said to the crowd, but still no one spoke. Finally one parent stood up and said, "I see no reason to remain," and within another minute, the room was empty.

"A waste of time," Sarek said on the flitter ride home, but Amanda was silent, watching the dark landscape slide past. In the back seat, Sybok said nothing.

As soon as they reached home, Sarek went to his study and Amanda checked on Spock who was finishing his schoolwork in his room. Across the hall Sybok shut his door quietly and Amanda hesitated for a moment before knocking. He opened the door for her at once and she walked in and shut the door behind her.

"Do you know anything about Professor Robinson's grades?" she said, sitting on the edge of the bed. Sybok nodded as he sat at the other end of the bed.

To her surprise, Amanda's next words tumbled out almost of their own accord.

"Did you take them?"

Instead of answering, Sybok slipped his hand under the thick mattress of his bed and pulled out a square flimplast.

Amanda's heart gave a lurch. In the flitter ride home she had felt Sarek's irritation at the interruption in his evening—and his certainty that Sybok was not involved in the theft. Normal enough to feel his emotions this way, that give and take of being connected.

What she didn't feel was anything at all from Sybok. His bell-like clarity, his open affection for her, his eagerness to share what he was thinking—all muted and cordoned off from her in a way that was almost frightening. Something was up.

Her first thought was that he must have known who the thief was. It would be like him to protect someone out of a mistaken sense of compassion or empathy.

She didn't expect him to confess to taking the grades himself.

"Why?" she asked, and he handed the flimplast to her.

"See?" he said, pointing to the list of grades.

"I know," she said. "The exam grades."

He made a sound that was almost impatient.

"No, here," he said, tapping the flimplast, and she looked more closely. There beside one of the grades was the Vulcan rune used as a question mark. "Do you see?"

And suddenly she did. Her eyes welled up.

"Someone was questioning the grade," she said simply, and Sybok said, "Yes. When I came to check my exam score, I saw this. I took it down so Professor Robinson wouldn't know."

_So Professor Robinson wouldn't know that one of his students doubted his grade, had cast his ability as a teacher in an unflattering light. So he wouldn't be shamed or lose face or feel his dignity under attack—the way a Vulcan might._

"I see," Amanda said softly. "But you really should explain this to Professor Robinson. Right now he thinks one of his students is a thief."

"I am," Sybok said without a trace of guile in his face.

"Well, perhaps," Amanda said with a rueful smile. "But he needs to know _why_ you are a thief. I'm sure he's a lot stronger than you give him credit for."

X X X X X

When they are a block away from the Academy, they slow their steps and then stop, unwilling to part too quickly. With a glance around, Nyota leans her forehead briefly into Spock's chest before pulling back, speeding up his heartbeat and flushing his torso. With a sigh she opens her bag again and hands him the clan missive.

"Here," she says. "Keep this until I ask for it."

"You've decided."

"I'll give it to her after the postings in March. She'll probably be mad at me, but at least she'll have a choice about what to do that way."

"A secret is a heavy burden to bear."

"I know," she says, and though he cannot see her clearly in the dark, he hears the layers of meaning in her reply.

He tucks the missive in his travel bag and they start walking. Neither will mention it again, not until six months in the future when he holds her in his arms, stunned by the losses of Vulcan, the fleet, most of the Academy's senior class—feeling her wracking sobs shake them both.

"She wouldn't have been here if I'd given her the missive," she will say, her face roughened by mucus and tears, and he will murmur, "You cannot know that," into her unhearing ear.

"Regret is illogical," he will tell her—will tell them both—over and over again that night, and all the nights that it takes the _Enterprise_ to limp back to Earth powered by tugs. "You cannot blame yourself."

He will say the words that neither of them will believe, six months in the future.

But right now he throws caution to the wind, as his mother might say, and takes Nyota's hands in his, reeling her to him despite the risk that they might be spotted here on the sidewalk, their palms touching, the snap of electricity jumping between their fingers. Tugging her close enough to feel the fuzz of her cheek and the brush of her eyelash as he leans in, a thief, stealing a kiss.

**A/N: Ah, those of you who review—what a treasure you are. You keep me coming back to the story to watch and report what I see. Thank you.**

**If you are looking for a terrific Darcy/Loki story in the "Thor" fandom, StarTrekFanWriter is busy with "Blue," listed in my faves. **


	16. Prelude

**Chapter 16: Prelude  
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**Disclaimer: I do not own these characters and make no money here—and little enough elsewhere!**

Spock is stepping out of the shower when he hears the chime on his subspace console. His mother, obviously. Although it's 3:44 AM San Francisco time, his mother knows he won't be asleep. On Vulcan her day is just ending. He can picture her putting a pot of soup on the cooker before parking herself in his father's study to make a call.

He's usually the one who calls—once a week at a scheduled time—but he senses nothing through his family bond that makes him think the call is an emergency. Indeed, if anything, his mother seems more remote than usual. Unwelcomed news, perhaps, or something unpleasant she's gently shielding from him even as she thinks he needs to hear it. Nothing dire. More heart surgery scheduled in his father's future? That must be it.

He slips his arms into his thick white robe and tugs it closed before answering the chime. At once his mother's face swims into view on the screen. As he expects, her brows are furrowed and she isn't smiling, indications that she is concerned or in mild distress.

"Mother," he says, but before he can continue, she says, "I wanted you to hear it from me first."

Immediately Spock is alarmed. No preface, not chitchat, no human niceties. Not like his mother at all.

"Father—" Spock begins, but his mother shakes her head.

"No, your father is well. This is…something else."

At that, Spock feels his mother's rising anxiety and he takes a deep breath. She glances away for a moment before continuing.

"It's about T'Pring," she says, and he looks up in surprise. He hasn't seen or heard from T'Pring since he formally broke their bond on Vulcan last year—not that he expected to. She had clearly been angry—or more likely, embarrassed—that he had taken the initiative in ending a relationship neither felt was satisfactory. "She's bonded again," his mother adds.

"I see," he says, struggling to blank his expression.

"Her _kal'telan_ was announced last week," Amanda said, frowning. "I don't recall to whom."

"Stonn," Spock says immediately. His mother's eyes flick open a fraction and then narrow. Anger. On his behalf.

That T'Pring has been bonded again this soon is almost scandalous—in Vulcan society, at least. It is also a calculated insult, Spock is sure. She must have been very angry indeed to risk censure from the Vulcan elite.

He feels his mother's turmoil as she weighs what to ask him.

"You knew about…Stonn?"

"I suspected," Spock says, feeling his own anger competing with his mother's. "They were traveling together during her tour on Earth last year. I spoke to him in New York."

"Oh, Spock!" his mother says, her voice anguished. "Why didn't you tell me?"

He says nothing.

For a few moments he senses her distress and he tries to keep his gaze steady to reassure her.

_I am…okay. _

It's true, relatively speaking. He certainly doesn't regret breaking his bond with T'Pring. Long ago he had given up the notion that they might be friends or companions—T'Pring's disinterest was evident. But he had reconciled himself to the idea of themselves as partners pooling their economic resources and raising a family—not as satisfying as a genuine friendship, perhaps, and not approaching the intensity of the emotions his parents feel for each other, but a workable arrangement, and probably not that rare.

Still, when he traveled to New York unannounced to surprise T'Pring while she toured with a group of architects from Vulcan, he had been dismayed to find Stonn in her room, smirking, barely civil. If Stonn were a sexual dalliance only, Spock wouldn't have cared. After all, Spock's own sexual history isn't an empty page. As a student at the Academy, he had engaged in sexual relations with several other cadets, none involving an emotional attachment or even an expectation of one.

By the time he graduated he had satisfied any curiosity he might have had about human sexuality and was resigned to an abstemious life as an instructor at the Academy.

Until he met Nyota.

As astonished as he was to find himself pulled toward Nyota—attracted to her intellect while she was his student, attracted to her sexually as well when she was his student aide—he was careful not to act on his feelings until after he had dissolved his formal ties to T'Pring.

Perhaps that, he thinks, is the reason for his lingering anger with T'Pring—all the misery he endured out of a sense of fairness to her; a lack of similar restraint on her part.

Or maybe, he admits, his anger is a symptom of something more shameful—mere wounded pride, for instance, that she prefers someone else over him.

Or closer to the truth, that she prefers Stonn—the schoolyard bully who, if Spock is completely honest, dogs his childhood memories with his relentless, pointed, undisguised hatred.

That, and the fact that her relationship with Stonn is not just a convenient sexual release but something more, something deeper—something she refused to grant him, despite holding a piece of his consciousness in her own.

"You know," his mother says, "that you can tell me anything. If you need to."

She looks at him with the kind of earnest intensity that always made him uncomfortable as a child, unsure exactly what she wanted from him. When he complained once to his father, Sarek was unsympathetic.

"Your mother's concern for you is justified," he said. "Your decisions are not always wise."

That, too, is true, Spock admits to himself. His relationship with Nyota, for instance…his decision to ignore the cease and desist order established at the conclusion of his disciplinary hearing.

He shares none of that with his mother—because he knows he isn't being wise.

When the silence stretches between them a beat too long, his mother folds her hands in front of her and sighs.

"Mother, I—"

He pauses.

In one way it would be a relief to tell her what she wants to know—the details of the hearing, an explanation of what led up to it, what has transpired since.

What Nyota means to him.

But he isn't quite ready to answer that yet. To do so—to speak on Nyota's behalf about a future they might have together—feels presumptuous, like taking the choice of how to navigate her career in Starfleet away from her before she's had time to fully consider it.

The worried frown on his mother's face prompts him to stumble on.

"We do need to talk," he says, and his mother's expression brightens at once. "But not now. And not like this, over subspace."

"Then when—"

"The end of February," he says quickly, settling the matter for them both. "I'll come home during the Academy spring break for a few days. If I tell Captain Pike now, I can reschedule the shipyard visit planned for then."

He feels more than sees his mother's disappointment—and her resolve not to pry. He sends back a wave of gratitude.

Reaching for the subspace controls, he hears his mother say, "It's not easy," and he pulls back his hand and waits. She wants to tell him something, though he's at a loss to know what.

"Even when two people are truly committed for each other, it's not easy," she says, and he realizes that she is talking about T'Pring.

"I've told you before, Mother," he says, feeling a flash of irritation at the human capacity to forget, "that I do not regret the bonding. It made me feel more…_typical_…less isolated."

They've had this conversation before—or parts of it—her uncertainty about bonding Spock as a child driving her guilt.

"I'm not just talking about being bonded," his mother says slowly. "I mean letting a friendship evolve into something more. Vulcans have it backwards, as far as I'm concerned. You have to be friends first. Without that—"

She lets her words drift off.

That his parents haven't always been friends catches Spock off guard—not that obvious truth, but the fact that beyond asking his father once about why he married an Earth woman, Spock has ignored the _how_ of their relationship.

Picking up on his confusion, his mother looks up.

"I've told you that story before," she says, the corner of her mouth turning up. "About how I had to educate your father about what it means to be a friend?"

She's smiling now as she conjures up some image, the happiest she's looked since the call began. Spock nods.

"You have," he says, his own lip quirking up at the realization that for once he knows what his mother needs, knows how to make her happy. "But I would enjoy hearing you tell it again."

X X X X X

If Amanda's rent hadn't been due, she would have quit the first week.

_No, that wasn't true_. She was far too stubborn to let a bunch of snooty Vulcans run her off. Not the first week.

Her part-time job as cultural aide to the Vulcan embassy—navigating the adjutants and junior ambassadors through the shoals of Terran customs and behaviors—paid too well simply to walk away, even if she weren't staying partly to prove a point—not to the Vulcans with their maddening indifference but to herself, at least. She had been warned by more than one skeptical human that the job was untenable, that no one could work for any length of time with the Vulcans at the embassy. That despite their trumpeted belief in IDIC—infinite diversity in infinite combinations—Vulcans were notoriously insular, even chauvinistic.

Before she met any Vulcans, Amanda had been impatient with that sort of talk, dismissing it as bigotry. _Now, however_—well, it was galling to see the gap between her liberal ideology and the reality of being snubbed daily by people who treated her with barely-disguised contempt.

Even Sarek, the junior ambassador who hired her, had proven difficult to get to know. And not very helpful, either.

Like the matter of where to work, for instance. Amanda spent one frustrating day trying to figure out the logistics of a work area—literally walking from office to office in the gray stone embassy looking for an empty desk in the corner of a room where she could set up a computer connection. No one offered to accommodate her. In fact, the blank or disapproving expressions the staff members gave her made her hesitant to even ask.

She resolved to ask Sarek to help her, and the next afternoon when she returned to the embassy, she saw him and an older Vulcan walking ahead of her at the far end of the corridor. Hurrying to catch up, she felt a wave of frustration as they turned the corner.

"Wait!" she called out, but she was sure they had been too far away to hear. She redoubled her speed and rounded the corner—and plowed right into the elderly Vulcan.

"I'm so sorry!" she said, instinctively grabbing the man's forearm to keep him from rocking backward. From the corner of her eye, Amanda saw Sarek take a step away, his exotic features radiating mild shock.

She dropped her hand at once. If she didn't know much about Vulcans, she did know that touch was taboo. Her face instantly flushed.

"I'm so sorry!" she said again, darting a glance from the older man to Sarek. The elderly Vulcan's expression was flat, impenetrable, but Sarek's eyes were narrowed slightly with the same ghost of amusement she remembered from her interview weeks ago when she accidentally tumbled her chair over.

"Ms. Grayson," Sarek said evenly. "I do not believe you have met Ambassador Somak. Ambassador, Ms. Grayson is our new cultural aide."

The ambassador said nothing, nodding slowly. Nothing in his expression changed but his disapproval was palpable.

She lifted her gaze to Sarek and raised her eyebrows.

_I've already apologized. Twice._

The same flutter of amusement crossed his brow.

For a moment she stood flushed and tongue-tied.

"You asked us to wait?" Sarek prompted, and Amanda flushed harder.

"Yes, well," she stuttered, "I wanted to see about finding a workspace. If you could—"

"Of course," Sarek said, turning away and continuing down the corridor with Ambassador Somak.

A dismissal, clearly. Amanda hesitated only a moment before calling out, "When can I—"

Sarek didn't pause but looked briefly over his shoulder. This time he didn't look amused.

"I will contact you when it is appropriate," he said. Amanda silently fumed.

Several days went by before she saw him again, this time when he stuck his head in the door of the office of the adjutant she was coaching in Standard slang.

"I have a place set up for you," he said without preamble. She waited for him to continue and when he didn't, she sighed.

"Do I have to guess where it is?"

He blinked in obvious confusion. Now it was her turn to be amused.

"I'll come to your office as soon as we are finished here," she said, looking him in the eye and then deliberately glancing away_. Perhaps that was being too cheeky?_ She looked up but he had already disappeared.

She was still feeling amused—and cheeky—when she entered Sarek's office an hour later. Immediately she spotted a desk set up in the corner, a portable computer terminal in its packaging on top.

"This is where I'm to work?" she said, moving past Sarek who sat at his own workstation. "Are you sure I won't bother you?"

For all her missteps, he must find her company acceptable after all. She grinned in spite of herself.

"There was no other place," Sarek said. "Everyone else objected."

Amanda's grin evaporated.

"Oh!"

"As I am away from my office more than I am here, your presence will not disturb me."

She was surprised at how disappointed she felt.

For the next few weeks she hardly saw Sarek at all, or if she did, he was busy, preoccupied, rarely doing more than looking up from his computer to acknowledge her.

Most of her time at the embassy she spent tutoring various members of the staff on everything from Terran dressing habits to how to engage in casual chitchat. Usually someone would have a very specific request—_how do I select an appropriate gift for a human celebrating his own nativity; please explain the significance of so many different types of human footwear_—that she could answer quickly and concisely, though sometimes the requests were more complicated and she had to spend a great deal of time organizing her response.

_Please offer information about any topics not suitable for discussion with humans, _for instance.

"You know," she said one day when Sarek was in the office as she was finishing up, "instead of just waiting for individual questions to come up, I think I'm going to offer a discussion forum for anyone who wants to attend."

She looked over at Sarek to gauge his response. As usual, his attention seemed elsewhere, and when he didn't reply, Amanda assumed he wouldn't and she turned back to her computer. He did that sometimes; not, as she had thought at first, out of rudeness, but because he had nothing to add. She had to admit that her comments often didn't require an answer—although a human would have felt compelled to give one.

Today, however, his silence niggled at her and she took a breath to continue. Instantly she saw his posture stiffen.

_She was bothering him?_ Too bad. He could afford to learn a few human manners.

"You probably think that's a waste of time—"

"And effort," he added without missing a beat, annoying her.

Shifting in her chair, she angled her body toward him and said, "Do you care to explain, or would doing so be a waste of your time and effort?"

She was dismayed at how prickly she sounded, how aggrieved. Blinking and taking a breath, she tried to reign in her anger.

"Perhaps you are unaware," Sarek said, turning to face her, "that Vulcans prize self-improvement highly. The individuals who seek your expertise are motivated to rectify some perceived deficiency in their functioning. They need no _discussion forum_ to identify the gaps in their performance and knowledge. Your time would be better spent addressing their needs in private tutorials."

For a moment Amanda sat, flustered, her mind racing. Surely Sarek wasn't saying that Vulcans were so self-aware that they never made errors. She told him so.

"Not the kind of errors you mean," he said. "Not the errors in judgment that humans routinely make."

"Such as?" Amanda said hotly, and Sarek said, "Such as assuming that Vulcans would participate in a discussion forum."

He turned back to his computer screen, as if the conversation were over.

"I see," Amanda said, biting back her words. "Errors in judgment such as assuming that Vulcans could set aside their barely hidden xenophobic arrogance and learn something from a mere human!"

She stood up then, too angry to collect her bag or close down her workstation. From the corner of her eye she saw Sarek watching her march to the door.

_She should have quit that first week instead of waiting to get fired._

"Ms. Grayson," he said, stopping her. She didn't turn around but consciously slowed her breathing. "The second floor conference room is unoccupied every evening except Mondays. If you need it."

_She wasn't being fired?_

The junior ambassador's words were not quite an apology, not quite an invitation. Certainly not explicit encouragement. But Amanda felt her anger lessen, felt a rush of appreciation. She turned and looked at the man sitting behind his desk.

Sarek was staring at her, his eyes so dark that she couldn't read his expression. Of course, reading his expression always was a challenge, and since she started sharing office space, he had actually become harder to measure. Instead of becoming more familiar, the way a human companion might have, Sarek seemed more remote, ignoring her, or at best, tolerating her presence.

"I thought you said it was a waste of time," she said, and this time Sarek's expression did waver. His left eyebrow rose a fraction. The corner of his mouth turned up.

"And effort," he said.

_He was teasing her?_

Not likely. Still, she stepped back toward the desk.

"Then, yes, I'll send out an invitation to the staff about a _discussion forum_."

She emphasized the words with more annoyance than she felt.

"If you prefer," Sarek said, "I can send the notice for you. If it comes from my office, the staff will feel compelled to attend."

At once Amanda felt her anger return.

"And they won't come unless they are compelled to?"

"Precisely."

"No, thank you! I don't want to force anyone to do something against their will! That's not what humans do!"

At that Sarek looked unmistakably flustered.

"It is my understanding," he said, "that quite a few behaviors are imposed on humans against their will. Vaccination against disease, compulsory education, traffic signals, laws forbidding—"

Amanda shifted and crossed her arms.

"Okay, you've made your point! But I still don't want you to force anyone to come. It takes the fun out of things."

"The discussion forum is supposed to be…fun?"

Again the baffled look. With an exasperated sigh, Amanda said, "Vulcans never have fun? Is that what you're telling me?"

Canting his head slightly as if he was mentally scanning something—which, Amanda realized later, he probably was—Sarek said, "Fun, as in amusement or pleasure."

Uncrossing her arms, Amanda said, "Yes. Doing things you enjoy."

"Such as doing a job satisfactorily."

"No, not really," Amanda said. "You can do something well that you don't enjoy. I mean doing things that make you happy. Fun isn't serious. It's lighthearted, like when you spend time talking or visiting with friends."

"As we are doing now."

"No! You and I are not friends. We are…co-workers, or colleagues, or something," Amanda said as she made her way back to her desk and sat down. "Friends call each other by their names, know things about each other. Do things together."

"I see," Sarek said, though his voice sounded less sure than he usually did.

A week later Amanda paced at one end of the conference room as the time for the first announced discussion forum came and went and no one showed up. For fifteen minutes she ticked off the possible reasons—the staff hadn't gotten her invitation, or if they had, they had forgotten when and where the forum was being held. Some emergency might have tied them up, or there was another meeting happening right now and no one had thought to tell her.

Nonsense, of course. Vulcans didn't make those kinds of errors.

More likely, she thought, finally packing up her PADD and turning off the lights, Sarek was right—that Vulcans might seek out her expertise privately but wouldn't attend a public meeting.

The next day she waited for Sarek's _I told you so_.

"You might have better attendance," he said mildly without looking up from his computer screen where he was manipulating columns of numbers, "if you offered a particular subject for discussion. Leaving the topic open-ended sounds inefficient to people who might otherwise have been interested."

She recognized that he was pulling his punches, that her planning had been disastrous. With a rueful smile, she said, "What was it you said? About human errors in judgment? I guess I proved your point for you."

Abruptly he looked up from the computer and gave her a hard stare.

"My words were poorly chosen," he said, and Amanda was so taken aback that she didn't know what to say.

The following day she sent out a notice that she would be free to discuss human eating habits and customs for anyone planning to attend a Terran function involving food. At least twice she'd been startled during a tutoring session when someone asked unsolicited advice on the topic.

_Why do humans consume animal flesh? _

_What purpose does conversation serve during meals? _

_Is the human predilection for refined sugar an indication of their suicidal tendencies?_

Considering how many dinner parties and large public gatherings the staff had to attend, she could be a valuable resource. And it might even be _fun_.

This time two Vulcans arrived early for the forum and Amanda was hopeful that more would show up. However, the only other person who came was Sarek, who slipped in the door right as the hour sounded. He settled into a seat near the back of the room—the way a supervisor might stay aloof in order to better observe her.

The idea made her nervous.

"Before we get started," she said, turning her attention to the two Vulcan women sitting on the front row, "do you have particular questions you want answered?"

"How long will this forum last?" the older woman said, hitching her dark gray robe around her shoulders.

"Uh, I'm not sure," Amanda said, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "I think we can cover everything I've prepared in about an hour, but if you—"

"So you cannot be precise."

To Amanda's astonishment, the woman stood up and made her way down the short aisle to the door near where Sarek sat.

"I can go faster if you need me to!" Amanda called, but the older woman exited the door without looking back.

From his seat near the door, Sarek watched Amanda with such a steady gaze that she flushed.

_He came here to see me fail._ The thought made her flush again.

"Do you have any questions before I begin?" she asked the remaining Vulcan woman, half afraid what she might say. But the woman shook her head and Amanda flipped off the lights and began the audio-visual she had made to accompany her talk.

Forty minutes later she was finished, as spent as if she had run a race the entire time. When she turned the lights back on, the woman got up without a word and walked out.

From the back of the room, Sarek stood and came toward her.

"Go ahead," Amanda said. "Say it."

"Say it?"

"That I wasted my time and energy."

"I found the talk informative," he said, angling his hands at his side like someone at attention. Amanda sighed.

"You don't have to lie to make me feel better," she said.

"Vulcans do not lie, Ms. Grayson."

She flicked her eyes up to decide whether or not to believe him. As always, his face was impassive, his expression—if not serene—then steady.

"Well," she said at last, "I'm glad someone found it informative. I just wish I knew how to get other people to share your view."

"If I may," Sarek said, motioning to Amanda to proceed down the aisle ahead of him, "I have some ideas about how to appeal to more participants. Would you care to discuss them, perhaps over a meal, the way humans do?"

"A meal? Now?"

"Neither of us has eaten an evening meal," Sarek said. "And I would like to practice some of the suggestions from your talk."

For a moment Amanda felt a wash of disappointment that what had at first sounded like a dinner date was actually nothing more than a typical Vulcan itch to try out something learned.

More disturbing was the implication beneath her disappointment—that she had _wanted_ it to be a dinner date—that she had stopped seeing the junior ambassador as her nominal employer; that his unapproachable aloofness had morphed into something else, something she found disturbingly appealing, even attractive.

She gave him an appraising look as they walked into the corridor. Junior Ambassador Sarek was proverbially tall, dark and handsome, his long robes accentuating his broad shoulders and his lengthy stride.

_This would never do._

On the other hand, she _was_ hungry.

Nothing in their conversation over a quick meal at a nearby diner hinted at anything other than pure professionalism—again to Amanda's disappointment. By the time they parted—he to return to work, she to head to her apartment across town—she was determined to squash what she recognized as that swoony, butterfly-in-the-stomach feeling that signaled the beginnings of real attraction.

They were colleagues, that was all. Not even friends. Nothing but people who happened to share an office space at work.

And she was going to make sure it stayed that way.

Her resolve foundered two days later when a parent of an elementary student in her afternoon program at a local school gave her two tickets to the symphony.

"Not me," Amanda's roommate said when she asked her to join her. "I'm not a classical music fan."

Her downstairs neighbor wasn't interested, either. The only other person Amanda knew well enough to ask was a waiter at the Moroccan restaurant around the corner.

"If it weren't tonight, I'd go," he said, shrugging as he folded napkins before the evening rush.

Amanda could, of course, go by herself. But having someone to share the experience was part of the fun.

Part of the _fun_. Fun that Vulcans didn't seem to know how to have.

She'd ask Sarek.

Normally she didn't work at the embassy on Fridays, and she wasn't sure he would be there—but as soon as she started down the hallway toward his office, she saw that his light was on.

Despite her determination to stay cool and detached, her heartbeat sped up.

If he was surprised to see her, he didn't show it. Instead, Sarek leaned back in his chair as if nothing were out of the ordinary.

"Ms. Grayson," he said.

"Amanda," she said. "You always call me Ms. Grayson, and it feels so…formal."

Folding his hands on his desk, Sarek leaned forward.

"I understood that when two people of unequal social status were in communication, honorifics were used among speakers of Standard. Was I mistaken?"

_Unequal social status_. Amanda felt a weight settle in her stomach. Well, it was true, wasn't it? He was a junior ambassador and she was a nobody. No, that smacked of self-pity. She was an underemployed certified teacher looking for a full time job while working as a part-time cultural aide.

_There. That sounded better._

"It's just," she stuttered, "that the difference in Vulcan and Terran traditions about names make things more awkward. By human standards, I should also be addressing you the way you address me, by your family name. When you call me Ms. Grayson and I call you Sarek, it's…out of balance. I don't even know your family name."

Suddenly feeling that she was being overly familiar, Amanda looked away.

"You couldn't pronounce it," Sarek said after a moment, and Amanda looked back up and frowned.

"Because I am a human?" she said with a hint of irritation, and Sarek said, "Exactly."

There it was again, that dizzy motion of one step forward and two steps backward in getting to know him. _Prickly son of a—_

"Did you need something?" he prompted. "This isn't your scheduled time to work."

"Oh! Well, you probably wouldn't be interested."

"You are making an assumption that might prove incorrect."

Amanda snorted.

"Like your assumption that I couldn't pronounce your name?"

A shadow flickered across his expression. _Annoyance?_ Good. She was tired of being the only one to feel it.

The silence in the room stretched between them like something physical. From down the hall Amanda heard someone cough. The overhead air handler clicked on and she felt the brush of air on her cheek.

Sarek blinked.

"S'chn T'gai."

"I beg your pardon?'

"My family name."

"S'chn T'gai?"

She mangled it, she knew. Her spoken Vulcan was more than adequate, but the fricatives in his name were rare, her tongue refusing to curl properly. She tried again.

"Mr. S'chn T'gai," she said, a burble of laughter ruining her attempted seriousness.

"I did warn you," he said, the raised eyebrow, the quirked lip she had come to associate with his amusement giving him away.

"Mr. S'chn T'gai," she said again, squelching her laughter this time, "I came to invite you to the symphony tonight. Someone gave me tickets, and I thought you might find it _fun_."

"I see," Sarek said. "I appreciate your tutelage, Ms. Grayson. This might be instructive."

He was watching her with an intensity that made her distinctly uncomfortable—and slightly aroused.

This could be a problem.

"Does that mean you accept?"

"Indeed," he said, and she felt herself grinning almost foolishly.

"On one condition," she said, stepping to the doorway. "I won't insult you by mispronouncing your name anymore tonight if you'll call me Amanda."

"The way friends do," he said, and Amanda felt her cheeks grow hot. How long ago had she scolded him, telling him he was not her friend?

Her words may have been poorly chosen.

"Just so," she said. "Like friends."

X X X X X

By the time he finishes his call with his mother, Spock has sent a notice to his computer aide to begin class without him. His aide, a young man skilled in programming artificial languages, will be surprised. Spock never misses class and almost never adjusts a class schedule, something that has earned him a reputation for being a hard-ass among the less motivated students and a devoted following among the ones who appreciate predictability.

A month ago he had returned from the shipyard at Riverside to see Nyota waiting in the shadows for him, the long walk back to the Academy an imperfect substitution for a real visit. Since his disciplinary hearing, however, those kind of cadged moments are the norm. He rarely sees her at a distance on campus, much less in private. Fortunately, the run-up to the _Enterprise's_ launch takes so much of his energy that it blunts the relentless, grinding, wearying frustration that characterizes his mood most of the time.

As his mother spoke this morning, he had a growing awareness that his frank unhappiness in the past few days has been because Nyota was unreachable, away visiting her family. Not that being in Nairobi made her any more unreachable than when she is working across the commons in the language lab. Either way, they are living at a distance.

It isn't logical, of course, but when she is nearby, even though the reprimand stays his hand and keeps him tethered to her mainly through comm calls, he _feels_ better.

Finishing dressing, he makes what is probably an ill-advised decision to meet her at the airport, the way she had surprised him last month. What was it his father told him? That his mother's concern was justified because his decisions were often unwise?

The shuttle from Nairobi is actually thirteen minutes early, but Spock gets to the civilian air terminal long before that. If he waits in the luggage retrieval area, he has less chance of being noticed among the crowd. On the other hand, if he is at the landing pad when the shuttle arrives, they will have an extra 22 minutes together on the walk through the terminal.

He heads to the landing pad.

Because the landing pad is open to the weather, few people meet passengers there. Only three other people wait, all civilians, judging from their clothes; all humans, which makes Spock pause briefly, the way he reflexively does when he enters a group with no other off-worlders. A quick scan of the crowd, a silent accounting. He's heard other visitors from distant worlds mention doing the same.

Soon enough the warning lights flash and the shuttle comes into view—first as a pinpoint of light, and then swelling in size until it rocks gently on cushions of air and settles on the pad.

When a gush of air signals that the hatch is unsealed, the first person out is a well-dressed man carrying an old style briefcase. Behind him are a couple in traditional African robes, and then a young woman in a school uniform.

More people in single-file—most of them with the stretched, weary faces typical of humans when they fly for any length of time. By contrast, five young adult men trundle out in a bunch, laughing loudly.

And then nothing.

Spock's heart flutters in his chest. Could she have missed the flight? He fishes his comm from his pocket. Surely she would have alerted him if she had.

Or maybe not. She wasn't expecting him.

Closing his eyes, he stops listening to the ambient sounds around him. He ignores the steady hiss of the shuttle engines, the clank of the passengers moving past him toward the terminal door. A breeze from the northeast—he blanks it out. The pilots chatting, still inside the shuttle. Their voices fade.

A birdcall, distant traffic noise, his own heartbeat. One by one he eliminates them and strains to listen.

And there, when everything is silent, he hears her—her familiar footfall, muffled on the carpet of the shuttle aisle, the rasp of her breathing as she struggles with something. He opens his eyes and suddenly she is in the doorway of the shuttle, a huge lopsided bundle in her arms. The image is so incongruous that he feels himself staring, unable to move forward until he sees her take a tentative step onto the shuttle gangway.

"Do you require assistance?" he says, and she sees him, her face lighting up, all the sounds around him rushing back in noisy cacophony.

Behind her is another woman—tall and dark and statuesque, carrying a bundle similar in size and shape to the one Nyota carries and holding a small child in her arms. A toddler, humans would call it, an apt description of a child learning to walk.

From the look of them, both bundles belong to the woman—not someone Nyota knows, he decides. On her shoulder Nyota carries a travel bag, her PADD still on and tucked precariously in the outside pocket. Until the landing she had been reading, not talking to the woman holding the child.

It would be like Nyota to offer to help a mother with her hands full—something that never would have occurred to him.

That realization gives him an odd twinge in his side.

"Thank you," Nyota says. "If you could take something—"

He joggles the bundle from her and reaches for her travel bag with his other hand, but the handle is snared by her jacket. Tugging experimentally, he calculates whether or not he could use enough force to dislodge it without pulling her off balance.

It seems unlikely. Reluctantly he lets go and Nyota grins up at him as the mother with the toddler comes up behind her.

This close even he can see the exhaustion in the mother's face, the way she is close to breaking. With a scooping motion, he takes the remaining bundle from her.

Her relief is apparent at once. She adjusts the toddler in her arms, who through all the ballet continues to sleep, its dark lashes fanned against round, brown cheeks.

Nyota holds open the door from the landing area to the terminal and they make their way toward the luggage retrieval spot. This isn't what he had planned, not what he wants, walking with a stranger's bundles in his arms, unable to spend the time speaking privately with Nyota.

At last they reach the carousels where their luggage waits, and a tall, thin man emerges from the crowd and greets the mother.

"This woman," she says in lilting Kiswahili, motioning to Nyota, "and her man have given me aid."

Spock is startled to hear himself and Nyota described this way. How has he given himself away? By watching Nyota too closely? By shutting out everything but her walk, her cadence when she leans toward him with a careful, innocuous comment that nevertheless speaks volumes?

As he hands over the bundles to the man, he notices the mother eying him, nodding. It's not a look he's used to getting—especially not now, when Earth United and other xenophobes have taken their protests to the streets in larger cities.

"Thank you, friends," the mother says. "Go in peace."

And suddenly she is gone, swallowed up by the crowd. With a little exclamation, Nyota darts forward and claims her single piece of luggage as it circles the carousel—and when Spock takes it from her hand, he lets his fingers graze hers.

_I've missed you!_ she says wordlessly, and he floods her fingertips with such a barrage of emotions that she gasps. Relief that she is at hand, literally, and sexual longing so intense that his breathing hitches. Disappointment that they are here in a busy public space, about to board a busy public hoverbus—unable to do more than sit next to each other as the bus jostles the 8 minute route to the Academy campus and their inevitable parting.

_Go in peace,_ the mother said, conferring on them a contentment that he tries to feel as they queue up at the bus stop, as he watches Nyota step like a lithe dancer into the bus, as he slides her luggage into the storage rack and swings his torso into a seat, careful not to let his thigh lap against hers.

To anyone watching, they are nothing more than friends.

Which is not to say that friendship isn't key. Carrying bundles for a harried mother, walking in a beeline through the airport terminal, sitting chaste and silent on a bus—it doesn't matter. If they were never alone again he might be able to bear it as long as they have such moments.

But he feels something else, too, that makes him weigh such times with Nyota and find them insufficient. He thinks of his mother's words, that friendship is a necessary prelude. Like all his mother's metaphors, this one leaves him oddly unsettled, not quite sure of her meaning.

_A prelude: a beginning leading to a work of broader scope and higher importance._

When he goes home during spring break he'll ask her to tell her story again, and finally share his own.

**A/N: Sadly, that conversation never happens, though Spock imagines what it would have been like in "Ceremony," a one-shot I wrote that starts with the Vulcan genocide and ends one year later. The next chapter in this story jumps to February 10...two weeks before the Academy spring break...and the day before the Federation learns about "red matter."  
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**To every faithful reader, please accept my apologies for being so tardy with this update! RL has been incredibly challenging—not always in a bad way—these past two months, but I have some free time looming soon and will flesh out the last two chapters of this story and post them as soon as I can. After that, I hope to jump back in time to tell Sybok's early story with Amanda and Sarek and Spock if that's something that interests you. Let me know! Your comments help keep me going!  
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	17. Lessons from the Edge

**Chapter 17: Lessons from the Edge**

**Disclaimer: No money made here. Unfortunately.  
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"What are you doing on Vulcan?"

Even as he says it, Spock realizes that to human sensibilities such a greeting sounds rude. His cousin Chris, however, isn't just any human. Instead of taking offense, he grins from the subspace transceiver screen. With one hand, he brushes his dark blonde hair from his eyes and says, "It's nice to see you, too."

"Where is my mother?" Spock asks, ignoring Chris' tweak. "Has something happened?"

"She's in the kitchen making tea. She said you call on Wednesdays, and since I haven't talked to you lately—"

"You haven't explained why you are there," Spock says, and this time he notes a shift in Chris' posture, a narrowing of his gaze. _Annoyance_—most likely at being interrupted, something humans dislike. Usually Spock is more careful to let someone stop talking before he jumps in.

_His own annoyance making him impatient and irritable. _

Inexcusable, really, to let his emotional state color his interactions with his family this way.

"Please forgive me," he says before Chris can respond. "The day has been…challenging."

At once Chris' expression softens and he says, "I know. That's why I asked Aunt Amanda if I could talk to you first."

Chris continues by explaining that he is on Vulcan for a medical conference—has been there, in fact, for much of the past week.

"We saw the newscast from Earth earlier," he says, and Spock has the distinct impression that Chris is watching him more closely than usual—the way he probably looks at his psychiatric patients.

"I am…okay," Spock says with a small nod, and Chris nods back and sits up, his unspoken question obviously answered. "Though I admit that the conclusion of the trial was unsatisfactory, particularly for Captain Pike."

_The trial._

Unbidden, Spock sees again the images that have haunted his infrequent dreams for the past year—a terrorist attack when he was attending a conference in Leiden.

He recalls the terrorists, members of the xenophobic group Earth United, storming into the large conference room of the hotel—Captain Pike walking toward the three armed men, his hand raised as he spoke, the way Spock imagined he had once gentled horses on his farm in California.

Spock circling behind the attackers, rushing forward to disarm one with a nerve pinch while Captain Pike wrestled the firearm from another—and then the sickening whine of a sonic grenade counting down to detonation and Spock's decision to pick it up and carry it out of the crowded room.

His unshakable belief that what he was doing was fatal, necessary. The barrage of sorrow and regret at leaving his mother and father bereft, of losing any future with Nyota—and those feelings set aside by the stronger resolve to carry on.

His relief at surviving the ordeal with little more than scratches and shattered slumbers.

And then today, the trial of the three attackers at last—and their sudden change in plea to_ guilty. _

The witnesses dismissed. The court disbanded.

This morning he had sat in a courtroom in Leiden with Captain Pike. This evening he sat—reluctantly so—with Captain Pike in a bar in San Francisco, barely avoiding getting caught up in a brawl with the locals.

Feeling so restless afterwards that he literally could not sit still—but paced around in his apartment talking on the comm with Nyota—in turn disappointed and resigned that she was already committed to working in the long-range sensor lab all evening. Tonight he would willingly have risked her coming to his apartment—or if she preferred, meeting her at the Anchor Hotel.

Instead he sat for a fruitless hour in front of his _asenoi _before calling home.

"So that's it?" Chris asks. "Nothing's going to happen to them?"

"The attackers will be sentenced," Spock says, "and incarcerated, probably in The Netherlands."

"But the group they belong to," Chris says, frowning. "Earth United. Nothing happens to them?"

Spock raises one eyebrow—his equivalent of a human shrug. Chris snorts loudly.

"Well, that's wrong," Chris says, and Spock says, "Indeed."

"It makes me angry," Chris says, and Spock tips down his chin but keeps his gaze on his cousin.

For a moment neither speaks, though as Spock watches, Chris' features twitch—a sure sign that he is rehearsing what to say. Beating back his impulse to hurry his cousin on, Spock folds his hands in front of him and waits.

At last Chris raises his eyes to Spock's.

"You know, it's okay if you're angry, too."

Spock's first inclination is to deny it. Irritation that the attackers have been hailed as martyrs by the public, yes. Frustration that the justice system can merely punish instead of rehabilitate the xenophobes, certainly.

But genuine anger?

He would need more time to meditate properly to know.

"You sound like my mother," Spock says.

Chris laughs. "I should," he says. "She's been telling me all kinds of stories about you."

"Exaggerations, I am sure," Spock says wryly.

"Not Aunt Amanda!"

"Perhaps you should tell me what she has been divulging to you—so I can judge her veracity for myself."

Chris grins and says, "Sit back. This may take awhile."

X X X

As long as Spock could remember, his mother had an uncanny ability to slip past his shields and know when he was working hardest to dampen some emotion. Unlike his father, whose mind Spock could feel bumping up against his from time to time and then retreating if he sensed any resistance, his mother routinely advised him to own up to his feelings.

"It's okay to feel what you are feeling," she would say when he struggled not to flinch as she removed a splinter from his finger, or when his stomach rumbled in hunger. "You don't have to hide how you feel from me."

But of course he did. When a meal was particularly filling or tasty, he rarely told her. When she sent away to Earth for a longed-for specimen kit that included several varieties of salamander larvae, he accepted the gift with stonefaced thanks.

"It's okay to be happy," she nudged, and he recognized her comment for what it really was, a reminder to exhibit human niceties as a way to show gratitude.

"I don't understand this Vulcan taboo about admitting what you feel," he heard his mother complaining one night to his father, but his father's rumbled response was too soft and low for him to make out.

Most of the time his mother's reassurance was just that—motherly reassurance that he could safely ignore—or at least pay lip service to.

"It's okay to be anxious," she said the first time he packed his clothes for a trip to the chess conference in Gol with his instructor, Truvik.

"I am not anxious," he said. Spock had already learned the futility of denying anything to his mother. As a way of heading off her inevitable interrogation, he added, "But if I were, I would be…okay."

As he grew older he realized that his mother's comments about emotion were more pronounced when they traveled to Earth or when her family visited them on Vulcan, perhaps because she was more attentive to emotions in general when other humans were nearby. More than once she called him away from his cousins to say something like, "If you are feeling overwhelmed by all this noise, you can go to your room for awhile," or "It's fine if you don't want to try the ice cream Cecilia is serving. It will be far too sweet for you."

His Aunt Cecilia and her family were visiting when Skon, Sarek's father, finally succumbed to the Bendii's Syndrome that robbed him of his emotional control. For years Skon had gradually retreated into solitude, partly out of shame and partly because his friends and most of his family stayed at a distance, unwilling to tolerate the emotions he inadvertently projected onto those around him.

Only Sarek's mother, T'Aara, stayed with him, using the strength of their bond to keep Skon from becoming too agitated and unruly.

As he deteriorated, Amanda sometimes stepped in for a few hours to give T'Aara respite care—and when she did, Spock went with her and sat in the corner of the darkened room, watching his mother soothe his grandfather with songs and stories from Earth—the more unusual the better for keeping the elderly Vulcan relatively quiet.

Eventually, however, Skon would begin to thrash and call out for T'Aara, and in those moments, Spock felt something akin to revulsion. This was what Vulcans looked like when they gave in to the emotions his mother was always foisting on him. _This_. He felt his face heat up with shame.

The last time he saw his grandfather, his Aunt Cecilia offered to come with Amanda to sit with him, and because Chris wanted to go, Spock came, too. At first the boys wandered around in his grandparents' garden while his aunt and his mother sat with Skon. Unlike his mother's garden, this one had no orderly rows or delineated patches for particular crops but was organized by some principle that eluded him. _Plomeek_ shoots grew between large feathery plants and huge succulents; rocks and even boulders seemed randomly placed; willowy trees crowded one edge of a shallow pond. A typical Vulcan garden—and Spock realized that his mother's mind did not work like that of the Vulcans he knew. It was a startling revelation.

Chris was skipping stones across the pond when Spock heard his aunt calling for him.

"I'll be there in a minute," Chris replied, picking up a flat red stone.

"No!" Cecilia called. "I need you now! Hurry!"

Dropping his stone, Chris headed back inside, Spock in tow. To his surprise, Skon was standing in the hallway, his white robe disheveled, his thin hair plastered to his skull with sweat.

"Help me get him back to bed," Cecilia said to Chris, and Spock saw his mother hovering behind Skon, one hand reaching out to take his arm.

"Please, Father-in-law," she said, trying to catch his attention, "you must come with us. It isn't safe for you here."

Skon's eyes were wild and unseeing. Flailing his arms, he took one step toward Spock and let his hand fall to his shoulder.

Instantly Spock was terrified.

"Who are you?" the old man shouted, bobbing his head close to Spock's own.

Years later a human classmate would ask Spock if he ever had dreams about being paralyzed.

"It's common for humans," the classmate said matter-of-factly. "I think those dreams keep us from wiggling around too much while we sleep."

"Vulcans dream very rarely," Spock told him—which wasn't a lie. What he didn't tell him was a larger truth—that in his dreams he often relived the moment when his grandfather leaned close to his face and asked the question Spock asked of himself: _Who are you?_

A few moments later Skon dropped his hand and allowed Cecilia and his mother to lead him back to the bedroom, docile, like someone who had run a long distance.

"It's okay to be scared," his mother said to Spock and Chris that afternoon on their way home. "It's scary to see someone you care about suffer that way."

In the back seat of the flitter, Spock was silent. Skon's shouted question and not any helplessness Spock might feel in the face of his grandfather's suffering was the source of his terror. Dimly he was aware that his mother would think him selfish, self-absorbed, if she knew this. When he and Chris were alone, he confessed as much and was relieved that Chris admitted to feeling the "heebie jeebies" when Skon had stood and shouted in the hall.

When Skon died a few days later, Spock was astonished at the sorrow his mother felt, at the relief his father projected.

His own feelings were mixed—a nascent sympathy for his mother, and a sense of solidarity with father—but something else, too, harder to define; a feeling of wonderment that someone could be alive and then not. Despite his father's assurances that Skon's _katra_ lived on, Spock wasn't sure.

More to the point, was it possible that he himself had no such future? No _katra_, oddity that he was?

He refused to consider how this applied to his mother.

Skon's death was not the first one he witnessed, but it was the first time he had known a sentient being to die. Only a few months before he had been swinging an _ahn-woon, _an ancient weapon made from a long strip of weighted material, in the open area beyond his mother's garden when he had the sudden inspiration of using it to launch pebbles in the air. Tucking a small rock in the fold, he whipped the _ahn-woon_ over his head and let one end go, turning the rock into a projectile.

This could be useful during his upcoming _kahs-wan, _he thought. He picked up a larger rock and placed it in the _ahn-woon, _letting it swing like a pendulum. At that moment a blue-feathered _lara _flew to a nearby_ i'su'ke_ bush and settled on a top branch, using its thin beak to extract moisture from the berries that were in season.

Without conscious thought, Spock whirled the _ahn-woon_ over his head and released the rock. To his astonishment, he saw a puff of feathers as the rock hit the _lara_, tumbling it to the ground.

Jubilation at his success, and then a growing uneasiness as he crossed the distance and saw the unmoving _lara_, its eyes still open.

Gently Spock picked it up and turned it over in his hand. To his horror he realized that it was alive, its chest moving rapidly, its black eyes slowly turning glassy. There was no consciousness, no sense of self-awareness from the _lara_ when Spock ran his finger over its body, but that didn't diminish his sense of _wrongness_ when the lara's breathing slowed and finally stopped.

Looking up, Spock saw his mother making her way across the yard and he knew that she must have been summoned by his distress.

Wordlessly she noted the dead _lara_ in one hand, the _ahn-woon_ in the other.

_Why did you do this?_ he felt her ask, but he had no words to explain what he had done.

Nor to articulate what he felt. Disgust at himself for taking a life—for celebrating his prowess at doing so, yes. But more. Incomprehension at how fragile life was—how the living and the dead were separated by little more than a twitch, a blink.

"It's okay to be upset," his mother said out loud, and with a rush he showed her the thoughts he had been holding back, like a boy pulling his finger from the dike.

"Oh, Spock," his mother said, leaning down and placing her arms around him, something she had stopped doing in the past few years. He did not push her away.

Sometimes his mother's assurances were embarrassing; sometimes surprising. More often than not he found himself resisting her or flatly contradicting her, such as when they waited in the foyer of the Vulcan Science Academy for his second round of interviews.

Most candidates were accepted after a single round of what Amanda dubbed _interrogations_—tests and formal defenses before a panel of inquisitors. That he was subjected to a second round was disconcerting at best, something he tried unsuccessfully to hide from his mother.

"There's no need to be anxious," she said, fidgeting with one edge of his collar. "You'll do fine."

Spock heard past the words to her meaning.

_It's okay if you are anxious. Your feelings will not hinder your performance._

His reaction was automatic and untrue.

"I am hardly anxious, Mother."

The lie hovered between them and he felt compelled to say something that _was_ true instead.

"And _fine_ has variable definitions. _Fine_ is unacceptable."

The night before he left for Starfleet Academy, she told him he would do _fine_ there, too—her choice of adjective deliberate, mischievous.

"It's okay if you are scared," she added, and he checked his impulse to contradict her and merely nodded instead.

Even after he was settled in San Francisco as an instructor at the Academy, his mother would occasionally tell him that was _okay_ to feel something, as if saying so conferred on him some needed permission.

Which, he thought later, it probably did, though he never told her directly. One day he would.

X X X

A loud hiss of static forces him back from the subspace transceiver.

"What was that?" Chris asks, and Spock says, "Unknown. Sol may be experiencing flare activity, or larger ships entering or leaving orbit emit ion trails that interfere with subspace transmissions. If it continues, I can call again after it subsides."

He joggles the subspace controls and the static wavers temporarily. In a moment it is louder than before and on the screen, Spock sees Chris covering his ears.

"That's awful!" Chris says over the noise. "Let me go get your mother so you can talk to her."

Waving his hand, Spock says, "No. I will call again tomorrow. I have a simulation to run in the morning, but I'll try after that. Whatever is causing the interference will in all likelihood have stopped by that time."

"I'll probably miss you, then," Chris says, lowering his hands. "I'm catching a shuttle in the—"

A sudden escalation in the static drowns out Chris' words, and with a barely suppressed sigh, Spock cuts the connection.

0218. Nyota will still be on duty in the long-range sensor lab. He should probably go to the simulation room and tweak the upgrades to the _Kobayashi Maru_ test scheduled for 0800.

On the other hand, if Cadet Farlijah-Endef is working on the program, she might take offense if he shows up now.

"Commander," she told him recently, "you're undermining my confidence by hovering over me."

"I am not hovering," Spock said with the same kind of automatic denial he often made in conversations with his mother. "I am merely…satisfying…myself that your work is adequate."

"That's what I mean," the Orion said, frowning. "You don't trust me."

But he does, to a certain extent. Still, he trusts himself more, and if that means he sometimes has to hover—

The odds are high that she isn't working on the simulation at all tonight, that the sociable, gregarious young woman has other plans far removed from anything to do with the _Kobayashi Maru_.

At least that's what he thinks until ten hours later when he turns to Jim Kirk and says, "Cadet Kirk, you somehow managed to install and activate a subroutine in the programming code, thereby changing the conditions of the test," and all the tumblers fall into place.

Of course.

_Sociable and gregarious. _What had Jim Kirk told Gaila Farlijah-Endef to get her cooperation? Or had he deceived her as well?

And then in slow motion Spock sees Admiral Barnett flick his eyes up from a communiqué PADD, hears him ordering the cadets to the hangar deck for assignments. Spock's task—matching the available slots to personnel, drawing on his knowledge of captains and ships—their temperaments and capabilities, who is best equipped for search, who for rescue, who for active engagement in hostilities.

Nyota's name among hundreds—a momentary hesitation before listing her as a member of the _Farragut's_ crew—Thom McEwan a sober, careful captain with a ship too small to be on the front lines.

A logical selection. He makes it and moves on.

Until she is suddenly in his field of vision—his about-face a necessary surrender moments later.

The way his fear ratchets up knowing she is onboard the _Enterprise, _and the paradoxical relief that knowledge brings.

Not until he is changed into his science blues and is finishing his pre-launch checklist does Spock have time to reach out through his family bond to his parents. On the short turbolift ride from engineering to the bridge, he cants his head and searches for them. There is his father, an undercurrent of controlled concern at the odd atmospheric flashes and unexplained subspace distortions; his mother's fear is brighter, clearer, more acute.

Before he can respond, the lift doors open and he is consumed with purpose—first getting the ship successfully out of Spacedock, then sorting through the confusion of Cadet Kirk's appearance on the bridge.

Avoiding calamity as the _Enterprise_ navigates through the space debris that used to be the fleet. The baffling words of the Romulan, Nero. Captain Pike's hurried departure. The away team's improbable mission.

"Minutes, sir," the young Russian navigator says, "minutes."

And he's there, in the katric ark, urging the elders to leave, beckoning to his mother, taking her hand and almost pulling her off her feet.

Calling the ship, feeling the ground shift, smelling sulphur and dust, the wind whipping grit and sand into his eyes—

His mother turning to him as the transporter disassembles the molecules of his hair, his outstretched fingers—

_It's okay to be scared,_ she says with silent words, her expression full of grief and fear and sorrow.

Grief and fear and sorrow as she realizes that she is leaving him—that he will have to go forward without her to remind him that he is human—that secret, private answer to his grandfather's question all those years ago.

As she knows this, he does, too.

And then, with a single cry, she is gone.

"Mother!" he calls to the universe.

But the universe does not reply.

**A/N: The movie script has Amanda actually saying "It's okay to be scared," as she and Spock wait for the transporter rescue. I don't think she means that what is happening to Vulcan isn't terrifying. It is. Rather, I think she's still giving him advice on how to live in the future, this time without her.**

**The terrorist attack and the trial comes up in several other fics, including "The Interview." Chapter 10 of "Crossing the Equator" describes in more detail the aftermath of the trial and the almost-fight Spock and Pike had with the locals.**

**Thanks to everyone who takes time to leave a review. Your notes mean more than you can know.**

**One more chapter.  
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	18. Indispensable

**Chapter 18: Indispensable**

"I married her because I loved her."

A revision, rather than a revelation.

At some level, Spock realizes that he has always known that his parents loved each other. What requires revision is his understanding that love, an _emotion_, was his father's motivation for marriage—the _because_ that tipped the equation.

No, not _tipped_ it.

_Was_ the equation—a new one, setting aside Vulcan tradition and propriety to become half of a whole with a human woman.

Not until much later does Spock also realize that his father's words in the transporter room are not a confession, not an admission, but a tacit kind of permission offered to his son.

Or more than permission. Advice.

_Marry for love. _

Spock sets aside this idea for later consideration.

For a year after the destruction of Vulcan, he stumbles forward like someone who trips over one rock after another. Until the anniversary of his mother's death he dodges most conversations about her, about any of the losses. The first ceremony at the Academy, for instance, barely a month into that year of grief—he misses that one completely, though he knows that Nyota will be there standing in formation with the rest of the remaining cadets.

He almost misses the _bon odori_ festival in August, when Lieutenant Sulu rigs the hologram projectors in the botanical gardens of the _Enterprise_ to simulate a lazy river so the crew—still finding their "sea legs"—can light and set adrift mourning lanterns. Spock makes a brief appearance but finds it too evocative to stay long.

He spends Rosh Hashanah in quiet, intense meditation, his guilt almost too much to bear.

At Mr. Scott's holiday _ceilidh_ in December, Spock consents to play his _ka'athyra _while the crew dances and drinks before they turn maudlin with a toast and a throaty rendition of Robbie Burns' "Auld Lang Syne."

And finally February 11 rolls around again—the anniversary itself—and Spock spends it in voluntary duty onboard the ship in orbit around Earth while most of the crew beam down for the obligatory speeches and gatherings. Then a private moment with Nyota in the botanical gardens where he touches her mind and shows her an imagined visit to a home that is no more, with a woman who is lost in the abyss.

The year is full of other things, too—a brief adventure where he escorts a Vulcan teacher and her students to the colony world still being built—hearing himself called an abomination, a disgrace to Vulcan for doing as his father had done before him, for choosing a human partner.

Bonding with Nyota in a ceremony so simple, so silent, that Leonard McCoy lets out a puff of air between his lips and says, "Well! If I'd blinked, I woulda missed it!"

Through it all, he hardly speaks of his mother, skirting the edges of his own memories.

Through their nascent bond, he feels Nyota's concern.

_Soon,_ he tells her, and he knows that she understands that he is waiting for the right moment.

And then he sees Professor Artura, not in the Academy halls or even on the streets of San Francisco, but coming toward him on a sidewalk of New Vulcan, the Andorian walking with his head tucked down and his antennae curled against the late afternoon wind.

For a moment Spock lets his footsteps falter and considers turning aside, careful to avoid contact. But he waits a beat too long and Professor Artura looks up just as Spock retreats a step toward a teashop off the thoroughfare.

"Commander!"

Too late to avoid conversation now. Spock stifles a sigh, clasps his hands behind his back, and turning toward Professor Artura, nods.

"Professor. I admit to being surprised at seeing you here."

"And I you," Professor Artura says. "I thought you would be on the _Enterprise_."

"We are in orbit," Spock says. "A supply run. Many of the crew are planetside on leave."

"Then perhaps you have time?"

Professor Artura motions with his hand toward the teashop and Spock stifles another sigh and weighs his options. He has no interest in spending time conversing with the professor right now. Professor Artura is not unpleasant and Spock is not in a particular hurry to get anywhere, but still—

Spock hasn't seen him since the genocide, and if Professor Artura is like most people he knows, he will feel compelled to comment on it—and worse, to offer his condolences.

Not that Spock doesn't understand the impulse to do so. More than once Nyota has taken him aside after colleagues from the past have made a point of seeking him out—crossing a conference room, hailing him on the street, sending him old-fashioned paper letters—to tell him how sorry they are, how distressed on his behalf, how inadequate they know their words to be.

Exactly so. He wishes they would cease trying. Their words fall short of any comfort—and always will.

"They have to say something," Nyota says, and while he doesn't contradict her, he does not agree.

Professor Artura stands motionless in front of him, willing, it seems, to wait forever for an answer. With a quick nod, Spock leads the way to the door of the teashop.

They are greeted by a cheerful Denobulan offering them a menu padd as he ushers them to a table in the corner of the small room. Glancing at the padd, Spock notes an unusually large number of Terran teas—not a surprise, really, considering how many human Federation personnel are stationed on the colony or who make regular trade runs from Earth. With a tap of his finger, he orders tea for himself and a dark coffee for Professor Artura.

"Cadet Uhura?" Professor Artura says when Spock sets the padd on the table. "She is here on New Vulcan?"

"Lieutenant Uhura," Spock says, and Professor Artura unfurls his antennae and gives a toothy grin.

"Of course," he says, bobbing his head. "The last time I heard from her, she said she was still in Starfleet_._"

That Nyota has been in contact with Professor Artura is unexpected, though it shouldn't be, Spock thinks. Her social contacts are far more extensive than his own, and better tended to.

"Serving on the _Enterprise_," Professor Artura says, looking up at Spock, "with you."

As he always does when he is with Professor Artura, Spock has the sense that a great deal of subtext goes unsaid, that the professor layers his sentences with multiple meanings. Is he doing so now? Spock isn't certain.

"As for me," Professor Artura says, lifting his hands to take the cup of coffee the approaching server holds out to him, "I am no longer employed by Starfleet."

"Indeed," Spock says, sipping his tea. The Academy is in flux, many of the professors and instructors returning to their home worlds until the student corps is rebuilt. Apparently Professor Artura is one of those who has chosen to leave.

"In fact," the Andorian says, "I have been on New Vulcan since the beginning. It's the only place where I feel….sane."

He looks up as he says the last word and Spock takes an involuntary swallow of tea.

"Are you okay, Commander?"

Spock sets down his cup and suppresses a cough.

"I didn't mean to startle you," Professor Artura says. "I know your reticence in talking about…certain things."

Again Spock has the feeling that Professor Artura is alluding to something just out of reach—a conversation with Nyota about the difficulties of the past year, perhaps, or a shadow reference to Spock's disciplinary hearing while he was still teaching at the Academy—when the professor proved himself a friend after all, refusing to testify that he had seen anything inappropriate in the relationship between Spock and his teaching assistant.

They sit in silence for a few moments before Professor Artura says, "I'm not sure how often you get here, but the colony is doing remarkably well. Vulcan resilience, I think. Not like Andorians. If Andoria had been…attacked, my people would have wasted all their energy on retribution, not rebuilding. But here! By the end of this first growing season, the farmers will already have half the necessary grain for a year. In three more years, New Vulcan will be self-sufficient, at least for food. Do you know how remarkable that is?"

From the tone of the professor's voice, Spock infers that the question is a rhetorical one, not requiring an answer. He lifts one eyebrow and waits for him to continue.

"Already most of the government buildings are completed, at least here in Shi'Kahr'a."

"Are you working for the Vulcan government?" Spock asks, and Professor Artura looks down suddenly at his cup and shakes his head.

"No," he says, "I'm not working here. I'm in recovery myself—with a healer."

Spock is so astonished that he says nothing. Professor Artura looks back up and says, "When…"

He blinks twice and starts again.

"When Vulcan was…destroyed," he says, "I lost someone dear to me, someone who had helped me, in an earlier time."

"After your wife and child were murdered."

Spock's tone is more matter-of-fact than he intends and he gives a slight frown to soften his words. Professor Artura nods.

"The lieutenant told you?"

"She mentioned your situation briefly. I do not know the details."

"A blood feud," the professor says, running the fingers of one hand along the rim of his cup. "Taria and Lullia—"

Pausing, the professor takes a breath.

"Your wife and child," Spock supplies, and Professor Artura says, "Yes. My family. My wife's brother killed a member of a rival clan and they retaliated. It's traditional justice on my world, Commander. For a time, I thought I would lose my mind. I lived with some Aenar cousins until I went to Vulcan to work with a healer. T'Van. She helped me find a measure of peace."

And suddenly Spock knows.

"You were more than healer and patient," he says simply, and Professor Artura says, "When I left here, I took a part of her in my mind. Later—well, the emptiness has been hard to bear—"

The professor's eyes meet Spock's own.

"Yes," Spock says. "I know."

From the corner of his eye he sees the waiter approaching and he sits back and watches as the teapot is refreshed, as Professor Artura is offered another cup of coffee.

"The healer I have now is helping," the Andorian says when the waiter moves away again. "I need to be here. I need to—talk—about what happened with someone who understands. Talking helps. That must be your experience as well, Commander."

Canting his head to the side, Spock considers what to say. That he has not had access to a Vulcan healer, that he almost never talks about the genocide, that when his mother died, he abruptly stopped being able to tell any stories about her? All true, of course, though for some reason Spock is reluctant to share this with anyone.

Professor Artura, on the other hand, isn't just anyone—

"It is not," he says quietly. "Though I suspect that my mother would not be pleased with my silence."

And with that, he begins.

X X X X

"Doesn't he talk?"

"You always say that," Amanda told her mother, trying not to sound as annoyed as she felt. _Doesn't he talk_ wasn't a real question at all but some sort of accusation, an unspoken commentary about Amanda's parenting skills.

It was one thing that her mother was disappointed in her and quite another to have to listen to her criticism of Spock.

"He talks," Amanda added, a defensive tone creeping into her voice and raising her mother's brow. "He's just shy."

"It's more than that," her mother said, glancing down to the floor where Spock sat quietly examining pictures of Terran insects on a small padd. "He _refuses_ to speak."

It was true that Spock was quieter than most human four-year-olds, but Amanda wasn't about to concede any ground to her mother. Instead she said, "Give him time. He doesn't know you that well."

As soon as she said it, Amanda heard her mother huff.

"It's not my fault that he doesn't."

And there it was, the gauntlet Irene Grayson repeatedly threw down, her invitation to argue about Amanda's choice to marry Sarek and settle on Vulcan.

Choices Amanda had more difficulty defending these days, even to herself.

Two months ago she had done what she never imagined she would do—shown up at her mother's door, blinking back tears, holding Spock's hot little hand in hers.

"Can we stay here for awhile?" she asked, bracing herself for her mother's _I told you so_, relieved when it did not come. "Until I decide what to do?"

To be fair, her mother hadn't pressed her on the reasons she had left Sarek and Vulcan, had been, in fact, patient with her prodigal daughter.

Still—there was the gauntlet lying between them, demanding a response.

"Do we have to go through this again?" Amanda said, standing up and walking toward the kitchen. Behind her she heard her mother rise and follow.

"You don't have to do anything you don't want to do—apparently," her mother said. Amanda flinched.

"Mother, I—"

"You have to have a plan," her mother said. "You have to move forward. You can't just drift here forever."

And that was that, her mother making a pronouncement and Amanda having no other choice than to agree, as if she were still a child living at home.

On one hand her mother was right. She couldn't just drift. It wasn't good for anyone, this aimlessness, this waiting, if that was what she was doing.

When she packed a small travel case for herself and another for Spock two months ago, she was sure Sarek would show up any day to take them back home, but a week went by before they talked over the subspace—a short, clipped conversation dry and inconsequential, the bond between them oddly tamped down from his end.

He was hurt that she had left. Or angry. Either way, she wasn't going to do as she always had in the past, rushing in to sift through his emotions, articulating them for him, with him.

Was she leaving him? Really and truly? She wasn't sure.

Spock was grieving, she could see that. His unnatural quietude, for instance. No matter what she told her mother, Amanda was also concerned at how inward he had turned, how focused he was on some internal calculus that he kept hidden from her.

Only when Amanda's sister Cecilia brought her three children over on the weekends did Spock perk up, though he was content to watch his rambunctious cousins from the safety of his mother's side or his grandmother's sofa.

"Go," Amanda said, nudging him, but he held back, like a tentative swimmer at the edge of a pool.

_You have to have a plan._

Was it wrong to be relieved when the local school authorities told her that they weren't hiring right now? Accepting employment would be a statement of purpose, of permanence, proof that her marriage was over, that she was—as her mother said—moving forward. As difficult as it was to drift without a plan, she wasn't ready to do more just yet.

And then one night as she was setting out the dinner plates, her mother said, "I've asked Richard Jenkins to come by. I hope you don't mind."

"What are you up to, Mother?" Amanda said, trying not to sound as flustered as she felt.

Her mother made some noncommittal sound and Amanda knew better than to push her. Besides, she already knew what her mother was up to.

Amanda and Richard had never been engaged, but as far as Amanda's mother was concerned, they should have been. They dated when Amanda was a senior at Berkeley and Richard began his law degree at Hastings, across the bay in San Francisco.

She wasn't sure why they stopped dating—or whose idea it was, if it was anyone's at all. Like so many things in her life, Amanda wasn't aware that she had started down a certain path until she turned some bend in the road and realized, with a start, that she was navigating by new landmarks. When Richard passed out of her view, she hardly noticed.

That her mother had invited him to stop by was disconcerting, to say the least. She felt a wave of anger and saw Spock look up across the room to her, his brows furrowed.

"It's okay," she said, as much to convince herself as to reassure him. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

When the bell rang an hour later, Amanda heard her mother open the front door and murmur a greeting. Keeping her eyes trained on Spock, who was arranging a set of multicolored tessellated tiles on the floor, she listened as her mother entered the room, Richard in tow.

"I'll leave you young people to get reacquainted," her mother said without preamble, exiting the way she had come. Amanda blushed furiously and looked up.

_I'm sorry,_ she tried to say with her expression, but she wasn't at all sure that Richard understood her.

He was as she remembered, dark-haired, unusually tall and thin, with the body of a biker or a runner. Not handsome in a classic sense, but not unattractive, either. His most distinguishing feature was his eyes, such a piercing shade of blue that she was always reminded of cornflowers or cloudless summer skies.

"It's wonderful to see you," Richard said, holding out his hand as Amanda stood up. As soon as her fingers touched his, he leaned in and brushed her cheek with his own—not quite a kiss, but something more intimate than she was expecting. She felt herself blush again.

Below her, Spock looked up.

"And this is your son?"

Without meaning to, Amanda braced herself for the kind of reaction that had become all too common—a raised eyebrow, a frown, some expression betraying astonishment or a reevaluation. _This is your son? _

But Richard gave none of these. Instead, he returned Spock's gaze with an almost gentle earnestness.

"This is Spock," Amanda said. When Spock turned his dark eyes on her, she motioned toward Richard and said, "This is my friend."

"Richard," Richard said, darting a glance at her. She laughed at her omission.

"Yes, Richard," she said. She watched as Richard picked up a loose tile and made a show as if contemplating where to place it.

"Perhaps here?" he said to Spock, leaning over and setting it on one end of the connected tiles. Spock said nothing.

"Or maybe here?" Richard moved the piece to the other side and set it down. Spock picked it up and moved it to a new spot.

"Oh, yes, I see," Richard said. "That's a more logical choice."

"The colors are complementary," Spock said softly.

"Ah," Richard said, picking up another tile. "So this one—"

"Will go here," Spock said, pointing.

"Fascinating," Richard said, putting down the tile and hazarding a glance up at Amanda. To her dismay, her cheeks grew hot with some unnamed emotion.

Gratitude, and relief, and even pleasure—that this man was being kind to her child. Nothing more, surely.

Suddenly her mother's voice called out from the kitchen.

"Spock, come here."

His unwillingness to leave her side—Amanda felt that through their bond.

"I'll be right here," she said, and Spock stood up and walked away with undisguised reluctance.

"Please excuse my mother—" Amanda said as soon as Spock disappeared through the doorway. Richard sat down on the other end of the sofa and smiled.

"She's just worried about you," he said. "Don't apologize for that."

"I'm not even sure what she's told you."

"Nothing much," Richard said, "except that you are here for now. That you've left your husband."

"Oh!" Amanda said. Hearing it said baldly that way—out loud—caught her off guard. "I don't know if I've left my husband. I'm, well, I just needed some time to sort things out."

Again she felt herself bracing herself, this time for Richard to ask her to explain. When he didn't, she looked up and saw him watching her intently, his blue eyes eerie in the reflected light of the table lamp.

"I mean," she said, stumbling slightly over her words, "I have left, but I don't know if I've really left. Does that make sense?"

Richard nodded slowly.

"I think so."

"I don't want to bore you," Amanda said, and Richard said, "You could never do that."

She tried to dissipate the awkwardness of the moment with a little laugh—but to her dismay, Richard continued to look at her with the same gentle earnestness he had shown Spock.

"Tell me about you," she said abruptly, and Richard sat up a fraction and shrugged.

"Not much to tell," he said. "I dropped out of law school and went to work in business—"

"You did!"

"Shortly after you broke my heart," he said, smiling, and Amanda let herself laugh.

"I didn't break your heart," she said, her voice playful.

"Sure you did," Richard said, and though he was still smiling, still looking at her with those blue, blue eyes, she had the sense that he was hiding something, too. "But that was a long time ago. I'm more interested in what you are going to do now."

A simple comment, but Amanda felt herself squirm. What exactly was Richard asking? Had her mother made some suggestion to him, hinted about the possibility of resuming a relationship with Amanda? It would be like her mother to do so. How unfair to Richard if she had.

"I hope you don't have the wrong idea," Amanda blurted out. "I still love my husband. It's just—"

Sitting back against the sofa cushion, Richard said, "I don't mean to pry."

"No, I know," Amanda said, looking down. "The truth is, there's not one reason I can point to and say _this is why I left_. It was a lot of things. And I could tell they weren't going to go away or get better, and I got…tired."

She glanced up. From the end of the sofa, Richard said, "I see."

With a sigh, Amanda said, "You might find this hard to believe, but Vulcans aren't as open-minded as they think they are. IDIC, their commitment to diversity? When it comes down to it, they are as tribal as humans, and as prejudiced."

"That _is_ surprising," Richard said mildly, and Amanda wondered if he was truly surprised or merely humoring her. Deciding she didn't care, she went on.

"At first when I moved to Vulcan I thought it was just me, that I was imagining things. Or that Vulcans were just hard to get to know—that it was part of their culture or their nature. But it's more than that. Oh, they won't say anything to me or Sarek directly, but they don't approve of us. I've lived there almost nine years now and I can count only two friends. Two."

Richard frowned and Amanda said, "People are nice enough at the university where I work with student teachers, but they aren't _friends_. And Sarek—well, I don't even want to think about how his work has been affected, how he's been passed over for promotions he deserves. He keeps that from me, I'm sure."

"He must find any disadvantage worth it," Richard said.

Like Richard's earlier comments, this also felt weighted with some unspoken context, making Amanda uncomfortable. She shook her head.

"When it was only directed at me or Sarek, I could bear it," she said. "But now with Spock—"

She paused. In the distance she heard her mother, probably giving Spock some unwanted direction. Looking up, she made eye contact with Richard.

"When I'm out with him," she said, "in some public place like the market or a teashop, I overhear what people say. Most of them don't mean to be unkind, but it's tiring to always be an object of interest. To hear my son called…."

She stopped, unable to go on.

"Don't say anything else if you don't want to," Richard said, and Amanda felt such a wave of gratitude that for one horrifying moment her eyes welled up.

Swallowing, she said, "How about something to drink? Tea?"

Richard left shortly afterward but made a point to phone the next day to—as he called it—check to make sure he hadn't upset her.

"Don't be silly," she said. "It was nice to talk to a friend."

"Maybe we can talk again sometime," he said. When she hung up, she felt lonelier than she had since she left Vulcan.

That night Sarek called.

"Are you well?" he said, and Amanda tried to listen past his words to his meaning. _Did he miss her? Was his question an indirect way of asking her to return?_

She asked him.

"I am inquiring about your health," he said, and Amanda huffed.

"Are you sure you aren't asking when I'm coming home?"

"_Are_ you coming home?"

"I don't know."

She closed her eyes and tried to get some sense of him through their bond. There he was, as remote as someone standing on the other side of a canyon. Here or on Vulcan, it was no different. She couldn't reach him.

Twice in the next couple of weeks Richard took her and Spock out—once to lunch at an outdoor café near Puget Sound and another time hiking in the nearby hills. If nothing else, it was a relief to be away from her mother for a few hours—and to have someone else interact with Spock for a change.

Both times Sarek called later in the day—as if he was aware of how unsettled those outings left her, which, she thought, looking at Spock, he might be.

But nothing came of their conversations, nothing she could count as _moving forward._

"I feel like I'm in limbo," she told Richard the next time he called, and he said, "You don't have to be, Amanda." She felt a jolt as she realized what he was offering.

"Richard, I'm not ready—"

"Don't say anything right now," he interrupted. "I won't push you into anything."

She took a breath but before she could answer he added, "But life is short, Amanda. Don't wait too long to decide what you want to do."

As she expected, Sarek called that night.

"I'm thinking about staying here permanently," she told him. "On Earth."

When he said nothing, she felt a flash of irritation.

"What do you think of that?" she said, hating herself for being so deliberately provocative, for baiting him this way.

"And Spock?" Sarek said at last. "You intend to keep him with you?"

At once she was both angry and scared. Closing her eyes, she was flooded with something dark and furious—and with a start, she realized that after months of internal muffling she was once again feeling what Sarek was feeling, seeing what he saw. Her heart raced and she felt behind her for a chair and sat down heavily.

"What are we doing?" she said breathlessly.

"I must go," Sarek said, and the subspace connection snapped closed.

But not the mental bond. All night she felt his internal storm and her own. By morning she was exhausted, and she was slipping into sleep at last when she heard the doorbell chime. One eyelid cracked, she noted the time. 5:30—the sun barely up. No human would visit this early. She threw off the duvet and grabbed her robe, meeting her mother in the hallway.

"I'll get it!" she said, barely registering her mother's quizzical expression. Unlatching the front door, she tugged it open, fully expecting to see Sarek standing there, not sure if she wanted to or not.

"Lady T'Pau!"

In the foggy morning light stood the clan matriarch of the S'chn T'gai clan, her dark gray robes sweeping the ground. Behind her Amanda noted a thickset Vulcan male in a simple cloak. Part bodyguard, part honor attendant, the man stood silent, imposing.

"I will speak with you now," T'Pau said as she took a step forward. Amanda fell back wordlessly, stammering, "Of course," as T'Pau headed down the hallway.

"What's going on?"

Amanda's mother, one hand clutching the front of her bathrobe.

"It's alright, Mother," Amanda said, not daring to catch her eye. "Would you take Spock back to his room?"

As she pressed past her mother and led T'Pau into the living room, she saw that her Mother was unaware that Spock had been making his way slowly down the stairs. With a meaningful glance at her daughter, she turned and shepherded him back up.

"In here," Amanda said, and T'Pau arranged her robes around her as she settled on the sofa.

"Is it customary," T'Pau said without preamble, "for human children to live apart from one parent?"

Momentarily flabbergasted by the question, Amanda blinked.

"Well, many do," she said. "When their parents divorce or—"

"And is it your intention to divorce Sarek?"

There was no claiming that her private business was her own, that T'Pau was out of line in asking. As clan matriarch, she officiated over every ceremony and legislated family disputes. Before he had asked Amanda to marry him, Sarek had spoken to T'Pau first, not, as Amanda liked to tease him, for permission, but to make sure that he had her support.

Wizened, petite, her dark hair streaked liberally with gray, T'Pau leaned both hands on her carved walking stick and watched Amanda with black, impenetrable eyes.

"I don't know."

"He's harmed you in some way."

"No!"

"Or been negligent in his duties as spouse."

"No, it's just—"

"Or reneged in his duties to Spock."

"He's a good father—"

"Then why," T'Pau said, her expression unreadable, "are you here?"

"Lady T'Pau, it's hard to explain."

"But not impossible. Proceed."

Letting out an exasperated sigh, Amanda shifted on her chair.

"I'm here because…because Sarek didn't ask me to stay."

"I do not understand."

Amanda shifted again.

"I'm tired," she said simply. "I'm tired of being an alien on an unfriendly world."

At that Amanda saw a tiny flicker of something in T'Pau's expression. _Surprise? Anger?_

"You find Vulcan unfriendly?"

"Very," Amanda said with some heat. "And prejudiced. And arrogant, annoying, dishonest—"

She stopped long enough to gauge T'Pau's response before continuing.

"But I value Vulcan, too," Amanda said hurriedly. "The commitment to rational thought and logic, to order, to seeking solutions peacefully. The lack of materialism. The belief in the rule of law. The history and traditions, the wisdom of Surak. The strength families draw from each other—"

Her voice wavered and she fell silent. Overhead she heard the hum of a passing commuter shuttle.

"Lady T'Pau," she said when she could speak again, "I'm not blind. I see the looks people give me, hear what they don't think I can hear."

"People are curious," T'Pau said with a dismissive motion of one hand. "It is unusual to see such a pair bond."

"Curiosity I understand," Amanda said, feeling her frustration rise. "This is something else. Something more. Something…unkind. And if it only concerned me, I could endure it. But Sarek's work—"

"Sarek has said repeatedly that you are indispensable to his work."

This said without fanfare, as a matter of course. Amanda let her astonishment show.

"Then why hasn't he—"

"I fail to see why this is sufficient reason to leave him and your home."

Folding her hands in front of her, Amanda said, "Spock."

"Spock?"

"The day before we left," Amanda said, "Spock asked me what a half breed is. A mother in the market told her daughter not to come close to him because he is a half breed."

"He is," T'Pau said, her eyes flinty and hard. "And there will always be people who find exception to anything. That is hardly reason to separate your child from his father."

"That's just one incident," Amanda said, lifting her chin. "I could tell you dozens more as hurtful, as thoughtless. Sarek knows. He tells me to ignore them. But I don't want my son to grow up believing he is less, that he isn't as smart and beautiful and cherished as anyone else's child—"

She gulped a mouthful of air and felt her heartbeat thrumming wildly in her neck.

"You put Sarek at risk by staying away," T'Pau said at last, and Amanda blushed at the allusion to _pon farr_.

"Not if we divorce," she said slowly, looking down, "and he finds someone else."

"And if he does not wish to find someone else?"

"If he had wanted me to stay," Amanda said, raising her eyes, "he would have asked me not to go."

T'Pau was on her feet before Amanda realized that she was leaving. At the front door the elderly Vulcan turned and said, "This is your answer to him, then?"

The morning light was noticeably brighter than it had been earlier, the fog beginning to burn off. T'Pau's Vulcan bodyguard stood at attention when the door swung open.

"Lady T'Pau," Amanda said, her voice quavering, "I love Sarek. But human life is short. I can't keep waiting for things to improve, because you and I both know they aren't going to. I can't do that to Spock."

Because she was looking so closely at T'Pau's face, Amanda registered the slight change in her expression—a softening of her brow, almost a sympathetic glimmer in her eye.

"Then this may be the last time I speak with thee," T'Pau said, reverting to formal Vulcan, raising her hand in farewell. "Live long and prosper, Amanda Grayson."

The rest of the day was a blur—meals cadged together with indifference, a persistent headache that fuzzed her vision and made her snap at Spock, confusing him. By evening the headache had finally started to ease when Spock said suddenly, "Father is here," and Amanda knew it was true.

She led Sarek to the same room where earlier she had talked to T'Pau. They sat in awkward silence at either end of the sofa. Spock, she knew, was upstairs in the room where he slept, her mother with him supposedly helping him get ready for bed. If she quieted herself, she could feel his anxiety—and something more, Sarek's presence hovering in the background.

She turned her head and swept her gaze over him.

_Come here. _

She wasn't sure who said it first but it didn't matter. The warmth she associated with his mind flooded through her and she shivered.

Slipping his long outer cloak off his shoulders, Sarek stood up and stepped toward her, draping his cloak around her before sitting back down. As he did, she reached up and let her fingers brush his hand.

"T'Pau says—"

"Sarek, are you—"

They both began and fell silent together. Then taking a breath, Amanda said, "T'Pau contacted you."

"Indeed," Sarek said, peering into her face. "She said I should begin negotiations as soon as possible."

Amanda felt her stomach contract and her face flush.

"To settle the divorce," she said, blinking hard.

"To repair the marriage."

"I don't—"

"Amanda," Sarek said, leaning forward so close to her ear that she could feel the heat from his face, "there is something I haven't shown you, something T'Pau says you must see."

Tipping her head back to look at him better, she noticed a sheen of perspiration across the bridge of his nose, saw a crease between his brows.

He was uncharacteristically nervous.

_Of being shamed by what he wanted her to see? Of being rejected once she had?_

_Yes_, he thought, and she closed her eyes and searched.

There they were as they had been when they were first married, Amanda's face still unlined, her hair pinned back the way she had worn it then. Sarek's memory of them walking somewhere—in the city?

_Yes_, he thought, and she returned her attention to the scene.

_What am I looking for?_

The sun was warm on her face, the scent of _il'drith_ flowers heavy in the air. And then, dreamlike, a Vulcan acquaintance was at their side, his words muted and distant in the memory. And like a dream, she turned aside and yet could see what was behind her—Sarek grasping the other Vulcan by the wrist and twisting so hard, so fast that the man's knees buckled and he fell, gasping, to the ground.

Before she could react, the landscape dissolved and was replaced by a street in the vegetable market, Sarek again at her side. This time when she took a step she felt herself sway with the heavy-hipped walk of the very pregnant, and looking down, she laughed at the image of her belly. As she reached out to pick up a melon from an outdoor display, she heard someone's voice and saw Sarek lean over like a battering ram. With a furious motion he darted forward and slammed into a small gathering of shoppers, knocking some down and scattering others.

And then Spock was in her arms, not quite newborn but almost, the tips of his ears barely unfurled. Their home—and neighbors sitting with her in the front room having tea. One elderly Vulcan woman turned to another and made a comment—and there was Sarek, upending the teapot over her head.

Opening her eyes, Amanda said, "I don't understand. These never happened."

"No," Sarek said, "but they almost did."

And suddenly his struggle was illuminated—the slights and insults and barely concealed looks hadn't escaped his notice after all—had infuriated him and tested his control almost to the breaking point.

She felt her eyes watering.

"I thought you didn't care," she said. "When you told me to ignore it—"

"I was wrong to tell you to," Sarek said, his breathing labored. "It was myself who needed to hear it."

"I felt so alone," Amanda said, and this time a tear did slide down her cheek.

With his thumb, Sarek rubbed it away.

"I want you to come home," he said.

He lowered his hand from her cheek and she sniffed once, twice, and then said, "But nothing will be different if I do. Nothing's going to change."

"You will not be alone."

She felt him approach her through the bond—tentatively, as if she were a piece of fine china.

"I don't know," she murmured. "I'm worried about Spock—"

"You told T'Pau," Sarek said, "that life is short. Surely it is logical to spend it with someone who shares your worries."

At that Amanda gave a soft laugh.

"Well, that's not the most romantic thing I've ever heard," she said, "but you do make a compelling case."

"Not surprising," Sarek said, curling his fingers around her own. "I am a skilled diplomat."

"Is that right?" Amanda said, pressing her other hand into his. "Then please explain why T'Pau said that I was the real ambassador in this family."

"She said that?"

"She said you told her I was indispensable to your work."

"Indeed."

"Don't pretend you didn't. T'Pau doesn't make those kinds of mistakes."

"This may be her first."

"Just admit it," Amanda said, hearing the patter of footsteps coming down the steps. _Spock, of course, his relief almost palpable._ "You need me."

"It would be illogical to deny it."

X X X X

"So your father convinced your mother to return to Vulcan."

Professor Artura is hunched over his empty coffee cup, his antennae straight up in the Andorian signal of intense attention. Spock nods.

"He did," he says. "My parents never spoke to me directly about the details, though I was more aware than they realized."

"Like most children," Professor Artura says, and Spock starts to ask him something about his own daughter but hesitates.

If Nyota were here she would know whether or not to mention the professor's daughter. Some people seem to welcome remembrances of dead family members. Others do not. Knowing who prefers what is beyond him.

They part soon and Spock doesn't think again about Professor Artura until after he and Nyota enter the _Enterprise's_ recreation lounge that evening. Jim Kirk and the doctor are already there at a small table, glasses of some amber liquid in front of them. Alcohol, from the appearance of it. And also from the appearances of things, not the first drink of the evening.

When he drinks, Jim Kirk has the tendency to run his fingers through his hair until it is oddly disheveled. Dr. McCoy, on the other hand, gives himself away by lengthening the syllables of his words into a heavy Southern burr.

"Looky who's here," the doctor says, waving them over. "We were jus' talkin' about you."

At once Spock feels some alarm. Nyota merely laughs.

"Sure you were," she says in a tone Spock recognizes as her teasing mode. "You smooth talker."

"No, really," Kirk says, "we were. Bones here was saying that his mother made the best pie in the universe and I said he was crazy."

"And I said," McCoy says, lifting his glass with his right hand, "that everyone thinks their mother makes the best pie but everyone is wrong. You haven't tasted real peach cobbler until you've tasted my mother's."

"Aw, cobbler isn't real pie," Kirk says. "Real pie requires finesse."

Resting one elbow on the table, McCoy says, "What about you, Lieutenant? You eat pie in your neck of the woods?"

"Are you kidding?" Nyota says, grinning. "My mother makes a yam pie that would knock your socks off."

"I won't even ask you," McCoy says, tipping his glass toward Spock.

"Strawberry," Spock says.

"Huh?"

"Blueberry, gooseberry, raspberry, currant, pear, and apple. My mother often baked them when we visited family in Seattle. While I cannot claim that they were the best in the universe, they were enjoyable…if you like the taste of refined sugar."

"Imagine that!" McCoy says a little too loudly, sounding genuinely dazed.

"But not peach," Spock adds. "So perhaps your claim about your mother's cobbler does have some merit."

They don't stay long in the rec room—but it is longer than they usually do, and Nyota remarks on it later as she prepares for bed.

"You seem happier today," she says as she unzips her boots. "More content. Did something happen while you were on the surface?"

"I had tea with Professor Artura," he says. "He's working with a healer on New Vulcan."

"He's here? I knew he worked with a healer on Vulcan before," Nyota says. From the corner of his eye, Spock sees her darting a glance at him and he realizes that she does this when she talks about the time before the genocide. "How's he doing?"

"Uncertain," Spock says. "He appears to be functioning well, but appearances can be deceiving."

"Yes, they can."

"You are speaking about me."

"Yes, I am."

She gets up from the bed and crosses on bare feet to where he stands near the dresser. Putting her arms around her neck and leaning into him, she says, "Professor Artura must have said something to cheer you up."

He circles her waist and pulls her closer.

"It was not what he said," Spock says into her ear, "it was what he let me say."

"What do you mean?"

"It was…the first time I have wanted to talk about my mother since—"

Nyota moves her hands up until her fingers rest on either side of his face. Tugging his head down until their foreheads touch, she says, "I've missed your stories about her."

"I was not ready to tell any until now."

"I know."

"My mother liked to say that life is too short to remain silent," he says, shifting his face and resting his chin on the top of Nyota's head.

He feels her heartbeat against his chest, slow and steady, like some answer to a question he didn't even know he was asking.

Feels her waiting for him to continue—without interruption, if he needs to, until he says what he doesn't yet know needs to be said, the way a diplomat serves by listening, indispensable.

**A/N: The end! Let me know what you thought of this ride! I certainly hope you had as much fun reading it as I had writing it.**

**If you've read my other fics, you may recognize Professor Artura. His backstory is explored in the most detail in chapter 6 of "People Will Say." And Spock refers to his parents separating in "What We Think We Know."  
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**The year of ceremonies is detailed in my oneshot "Ceremony."  
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**That first trip to New Vulcan and Spock's and Nyota's bonding are in "Once and Future."  
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**My plan is to write an early Sarek/Amanda fic next, one that explores their relationship with Sybok. Interested? Let me know! That will help me get started.**

**Thanks for sticking with this to the end!**


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